Not Standing Still

I don’t like standing still. I never have, not even when I was a little kid. I always feel like maybe I had some ADHD before it became fashionable to have ADHD, like I was some insane prototype who people just called “energetic” and “rambunctious,” for lack of any more accessible terms.

In short, I was all over the place, even when I was going absolutely nowhere. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, because I’m still all over the place. Except now that’s okay. It’s okay now to be who I am without explaining why anymore. It’s not negative to shift from foot to foot, waiting for the next thing to happen, waiting for that ever elusive burst of excitement that will stead me for the next while before I have to search for it again.

I don’t like standing still because I feel like I’m static electricity, dormant until something comes along to charge me and keep me alive. That’s it, a feeling of being alive.

Our eighth grade class motto was, “Do more than exist. Live.” I’ve spent probably the entirety of my life since then trying to parse the meaning of that motto, trying to live my life to the fullest, to squeeze the most I could from this existence, to be the person I want most to see in the foggy glass every day staring back at me.

So I don’t stand still, either physically or mentally. I want to always be moving forward in my life. Someone once said somewhere that if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backward, and I wholeheartedly agree with that, which is why standing still is so dangerous.

It’s like you’re on the moving walkway at the airport, and if you stand still you’re moving back the way you originally came. That’s the image that always comes to mind when I think of staying pat, of not taking chances, of not growing as a human being.

And there are too many people who are happy enough standing around, going nowhere, being the people they’ve always been. I don’t want to be one of those people. So I challenge myself every day to do something new, to stretch outside of my comfort zone…

To shift from foot to foot, and hope I don’t fall over.