Choices

I had an earth shattering, soul crushing realization the other day:

I will never be able to learn, do, or accomplish everything I want to.

This isn't to say I won't reach some of my goals, or that I won't achieve things in my life, but the plain truth is I want too much.  I want to be fluent in Russian.  I want to be a graceful tango dancer.  I want to be successfully self employed and maintain diversified streams of income.  I want viola to always be a real and serious part of my life.  I want to sleep enough, eat well, and live fit.  I want to have a rich and varied social life with wonderful, trustworthy people.  I want to be strong and bold and take risks.  I want to do all of that and look really damn gorgeous.  I want all of that and more- things that didn't make it on to my 101 list, like understanding string theory and the physics of acoustics.  Learning a coding language.  Identifying constellations.  Mentoring someone.  Climbing a mountain.  Learning to ride a bike!  Writing an ebook.

Are those things achievable?  Of course!  All at once?  Yeah. . .no.  It's funny that after I had this downer of an epiphany, I saw this quote (from dailySpark)

You can have it all; you just can’t have it all, all at once.

Right now, I really feel like I'm struggling with this.  Why can't I have it all at once??  We've grown up being fed this "you are so special and wonderful and the world is an oyster waiting to open up just for you!  rainbows!  puppies!  you deserve your perfect life!" (yay for generation "look at me!  me!  me!  me!" *sigh*) and that's just not how it works.  I prided myself on not being too entitled and always trying to keep that in check, but a part of me bought into it.  I am a little ashamed, and very disappointed.  I have always been a dreamer, the girl with her head constantly in the clouds, planning for the future.  It may be cliche- but the future is now.  It's time to face reality and prioritize.  So what if I can't get everything I want right now?  That's life.  I need to focus on giving every day my best and not sighing about what I'm not doing yet.  Time to start making some real choices.