While talking to my mother the other day, she said something to me that has nagged at my brain: "You need to learn to slow down and appreciate what you have."

Like a flashing neon red STOP sign, my mind hit the breaks. Slow down? Appreciate what I have? Umm, excuse me, I definitely do that! Who is she to tell me that I don't?

But then I stopped. I took a moment. And I realized...my mother was right (when are mother's ever wrong?)

For me, it's never truly summer until I've picked up the latest novel by Mary Kay Andrews. This month's read was Hello, Summer, and I have never related to a character more than I related to Conley Hawkins. I didn't quite understand why I related to her so much, until this line stood out to me: "Conley had been a woman in motion her whole life, always speeding towards her next deadline, next job, next relationship. She was unused to walking anywhere."

See a connection there? I sure did.

Like Conley Hawkins, I have spent my life in perpetual motion, never taking a minute to slow down, always rushing, rushing, rushing, onward and upwards, to the next goal, the next mile-marker, the next something. Because I didn't feel like I was truly accomplishing anything unless my life was one deadline away from everything collapsing.

I have lived and thrived in an ever-ironic state of "organized chaos"; I'm almost always trying to do ten things at once, and as soon as I achieve something, I'm already looking ahead to the next goal: career, grad school, buy a house, get married, get a PhD, go, go, go. I see the success of my peers and the people around me, and I want it too, but I want it NOW. Not five or ten years down the road, NOW. I felt like I couldn't be successful unless I achieved my success as quickly as possible. I wanted to be the girl who could say, "I'm only twenty-four, but look at what I've accomplished."

But what I failed to realize is that I can say that: "I'm only twenty-four, but look at what I've accomplished": I graduated high school, I graduated from college with my Bachelors in Secondary Education and English, I have a job at a fantastic school teaching collegiate-level content to high school students, I've applied for grad school, I bought a new car, and I'm financially independent. Like my mother pointed out to me, isn't that enough for now? Why can't I be content?

For me, the answer was simple: no, it's not enough, I can't be content. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if I don't take some pride in the things I have already accomplished, I won't ever be truly content. It's okay to be ambitious and have goals to achieve, but it's also important to celebrate the successes you've achieved in the present; when we start to become obsessed with the future, the future has a funny way of slipping through our fingers until we learn to acknowledge and appreciate the present.

So like Conley Hawkins, I think it's time for me to take a long walk on the beach to recenter myself. It's time to slow down, to see the value of what I have accomplished, and to see the value in myself.

So if you find yourself in a spot like me where life is getting messy and nothing ever seems to go right, just know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be right now. You WILL get there someday; you'll finish that degree, you'll buy that house, you'll land that dream job. But for now, it's okay to take a minute and celebrate the things you already have. It's okay if you don't do everything in the same amount of time as your friend, your colleague, your sibling. You are not your friend, or your colleague or your sibling.

You are YOU. And you matter. Right here. Right now.