Present Over Perfect

how our weird little ideas are, so obvious to someone else
but impossible to detangle ourselves.
I saw myself as a ball of energy, a firework, a high-
capacity person, fearless and up for anything. But as I
became more honest with myself, I didn’t want the lifestyle
being offered to me. I didn’t like who I had to become in
order to live in that world. And I didn’t feel those good,
whole, lovely feelings that people told me I was supposed to
feel after doing a good job.
One thing I learned (which seems massively obvious in
hindsight): we don’t all love the same things.
Look at your deepest dreams, and who you’ve always
been—the things you love even though no one else does,
the times in your life when you feel the most beautiful, even
if no one else thinks so.
And I found myself drawn more and more back to the
water, to simplicity, to the margins and the mystery, to the
ideas that don’t fit on Twitter and a sense of nuance that
doesn’t fly on Facebook.
I found myself drawn to the table, old friends, quiet
evenings, books. To home and family, life spent on porches,
free of makeup and microphones. I found my way back to
the girl I was in high school, in college: a hippie-ish
bookworm who loved the simplicity of having everything
she needed in a backpack.
There’s something, I’m sure, about going back to the
places you used to go to find the self you used to be. Maybe
my long-ago essential self is more readily apparent here on