Could it just be possible that I'm a failure?

With New Year's just around the corner, I've started looking back at what I've done this year. And.... I have to admit, I'm disappointed. Sure, I moved, I mourned my grandma at the one year marker of her passing, I took a PSAT, finished a book that I've been writing for ages; but in the short wrinkle of the Earth that is my life, what does that boil down to? Nothing. I didn't cure cancer, I didn't fight man-eating alligators, I didn't even go on a vacation. I did the equivalent of sitting on my butt picking my nose.

So that got me to thinking, what really defines whether what I've done is nothing or not? After some deep thinking, meaning around five minutes of thinking while I was laying in bed avoiding school, I realized a harsh truth. My biggest critic is myself. I'm not in a competition as to who can have the best life, I'm not being judged by my lack of enthralling feats. My own standards are higher than anyone else's for myself. Really. I am setting impossible standards for myself. I'm setting myself up to fail.

When I ran my first half marathon back in January, I finished it, I was proud, but I wanted to do more. I wanted to run a full marathon. So I trained for a full, but didn't meet the age requirements, so I ran another half. Still not enough, so now I'm training for a triathlon. While everyone was goggling at my feat, I was pushing myself more. To be the best. But I didn't know what I was trying to be the best at.

But really, can always pushing myself make me happy? Suddenly, I grasped that "nothing"  was really something. The "nothings"  might not have spread around the world, but to me, they were bigger than anything. My move taught me not to take family and friends for granted. My Grandma's year of passing taught me that someone can always be with a person, physically or not. The PSAT taught me that I am up against myself academically, and that with hard work, I can do anything I set my mind on.

I need to focus on having the life that I want for me. Not what I want because I think that other people want it for me. I'm going to read cheesy books, watch terrible TV, sing to Paramore, run my triathlon for fun, and be myself. I'm going to enjoy my friends before we all go to college. That means eating raw cookie dough, getting drunk on Sprite, trying to twerk, listening to Wrecking Ball, and doing whatever else I want to. I'm living life to the fullest, my way. And if you don't like it, sue me.

~Persephone