Jane and I are home by ourselves a lot at night. After I put her to bed I like to go out onto the patio by myself. I listen to the frogs by the creek and I eat mint leaves. No, seriously. Like a cow, I’m out there gnawing on mint leaves. In the dark. This is my current idea of having a good time.

If you had told me, way back when I was tanning my skin into a leather bag and taping pictures into my senior year notebook, that one day I would be a project manager who sat in the dark eating mint leaves and listening to frogs FOR FUN I would have laughed. Or cried. Or ran. Probably a combination of all three. My life was in a holding pattern for the awesomeness that lurked just around the corner. My entire high school existence was spent in a state of boredom, completely sure that a more fabulous existence was waiting for me out there in the universe.

Then I went to college. And while I loved college, I was certain then too that something better was coming. And so it went with every new phase of my life. I wasted so much time waiting for the wonderfulness waiting just around the corner. I did not see the wonderfulness already around me.

I’m trying to make sure that isn’t happening now. I’m trying to soak in these humid nights under patio lights listening to frogs. I don’t want to miss this present wonderfulness, however, simple, and however lonely at times.