As I sit in my room at 12 p.m., listening to the sound of the dishwasher grumbling down the hallway, waiting for inspiration to strike, I’ve decided to make this week’s article about waiting.

Usually by the middle of the week, I’ve been intrigued by something or learned a lesson in some way.

Yes, this week brought about new opportunities for me, but my brain is telling me these opportunities are meant for some other article at some other time.

I promise, this is not going to simply be late night rambling. No, there actually may be something playing on the edges of my mind, something that has been patiently waiting to surface all night, between the 45-minute drive home from work and the 10:30 ice cream run with friends.

Having writer’s block this week has, somehow, inspired me. Does that make sense? (I know you can’t really answer that question right now, but it’s past my bedtime, and I’m a bit delirious).

I’ve realized that my problem is, and has been for a while now, that I keep waiting for big things to happen. I keep waiting for that life-changing story to tell, that spontaneous adventure, that moment I just have to write down with pen and paper to remember forever.

While I’m looking ahead, imagining what my life will be like when these things finally happen, I’m missing things. That’s right. My head is in the clouds, and I forget about what’s truly important too easily.

In one of my recent blog posts on my personal site, I wrote about how badly I want to travel. You can check that one out here. I’ve dreamed my entire life of visiting other countries, experiencing more than anyone could imagine and writing stories based off of these adventures.

While daydreaming about what I’m missing out there, I’m really missing what’s here, right in front of me. I’m forgetting to appreciate the now. Why is the now so important?

Now could quite possibly be all we have. We never know when our lives will be cut short.

The news lately has shown lives being taken by other people, lives being taken in terrorist attacks and lives being taken by illnesses, car crashes or natural disasters. We hurt for these people, we say life is too short, but we keep on thinking and worrying about the future.

What we fail to realize is that we’re living in the future right now. At one point, this was your future, wasn’t it? Did you picture yourself more successful, or with at least a solid plan of where you were going with your life, or an unending stream of adventure?

We keep going, going, going. We keep waiting to run into these opportunities, and once they come, we move onto the next.

We forget about the smaller moments, the ones that made us smile for a little while, the ones where we felt peace with the world, even if it were just for a second. There is so much beauty in everyday life that we fail to see while blinded by broken promises of the future.

We aren’t present in everyday life. We have texts/emails to reply to, meetings to attend, appointments to make, classes to go to, errands to run, ahousetoclean-dishestodo-kidstopickup-ashifttotake-ashowtowatch-grasstomow-lunchtoeat-placestobe-peopletosee…

We are so caught up in all of these things, that we aren’t letting life catch up to us.

Eventually, life will catch up. And we’re going to look back and wonder if there was ever actually a present. What if life is just past and future, since we’re always moving forward until we have to look back? My point is this: while waiting for inspiration to hit me, I realized I was missing out on the little things surrounding me that make me happy.

I’m blessed with life, a life that includes a beautiful family, a big circle (or trapezoid, I don’t discriminate shapes) of friends and a tragic, crazy, complicated but also wonderful, immense but also small, divided but also connected world.

Instead of incessantly asking God for more, I should be sending up a multitude of thank yous.

Lastly, I encourage all of you to find beauty and inspiration in small things. Look around you, breathe it all in, appreciate the life you’ve been given, even for just a little while.

If you’re hurt, angry, sad, misunderstood, tired of waiting or overthinking things, just think of at least five things you’re thankful for at the moment.

These five things can range from ice cream, sunny days, books, Kevin Gates (hopefully not) and better yet, a nice country song to socks, deodorant, water, shelter and toothbrushes.

It’s the little things that matter most, I promise. Live in the moment, no matter how small. Do what makes you happy, be it staying up late and binge-writing your thoughts with the hopes of them helping others, or watching 17 episodes of "One Tree Hill." I like both of these.

Just stop and embrace it all. You won’t regret it.

Much love and goodnight/morning,

Marlie Jane Lynch