Life Passes By In The Blink Of An Eye

I was mindlessly scrolling through the Facebook feeds on this midsummer night as I often do on such midsummer nights when I came across a friend's blog with a post that informed me that July 2nd was officially the halfway point for the calendar year. So as of today, 2013 is officially more than halfway over. In her post, Cassidy mentions that January 1st and July 2nd are just normal days in the year. There's nothing special about them and you're no more likely to change your ways or attitude on one of those days than on any other day (in fact, I would argue those changes take weeks and months to identify and strive for).
Nonetheless, the fact that it's already the second half of the year reminds me of, pardon the cliche, how fast time flies. And while it moves so fast and it feels like we can't catch our breath and it just all seems like such a blur, a lot of things happen. I am one of those people who is constantly worried about wasting time and not doing anything substantial or efficient. So the fact that half the year is gone is incredibly scary to me. But then I think back on what has happened in this first half of 2013:

• Awards and scholarships that I'm still humbled (and excited) to have received: the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award, 21st Century Leaders 20 Under 20, Who's Who, Contributed Most To Class, the English Department Award, the ECCC Margie Hatfield Scholarship, the AT&T Scholarship, the Cobb EMC WYT Scholarship, and of course the ever important Georgia Tech President's Scholarship
• Landed my first real (paying!) job
• Experienced true heartache and failure in the form of college rejections
• Got over (mostly) that rejection by realizing the world is full of bigger and better opportunities
• Formed some new and closer relationships with both peers and adults, and pruned away some old ones
• Accomplished one of my lifelong goals (I remember writing it out in 8th grade in Language Arts class) of graduating as valedictorian--though I was one of five. And the icing on top of that cake was that the speech went great and people actually laughed when I tried to be funny!
• High school graduation--what the past thirteen years have culminated to

And there's so much more. It's the little moments that really make the past six months and one day such a whirlwind of action and excitement. It's the bus rides to and from Senior Banquet at the Fox. It's the standing ovation when one of our nerdy magnet friends was proclaimed "Bachelor for Life." It's sitting in a bounce house talking for over an hour. It's disturbing the man sitting behind you on the airplane because you talked for almost the entire four hour flight. It's walking around the mall until you're sick of trying on clothes. It's trying to balance on your friend's back while they're trying to do a push up.

I know that this latter half of 2013 has equally exciting and unimaginable things in store, beginning with:

• Entering college and balancing the new responsibilities like laundry and budgeting with the old ones like studying
• Meeting and bonding with my new GT PS 2017 family, especially on the fall retreat
• Making more independent decisions

If I could make one wish or goal for the rest of this year, it would be that I fully enjoy these experiences in store for me and that I hang on to those little moments I just spoke so fondly of. It's easy to get caught up in trying to live instead of enjoying the ride. 

I don't know what the rest of 2013 has in store for all of you. But I'd like to leave you with the same words we shared with the Wheeler Class of 2013. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "We are always getting ready to live, but never living." 

The rest of this year is yours for the taking. It's sitting on your doorstep. Those metaphorical doors of opportunity are waiting to be opened, you just have to start living.