Christmas Is All Around Us

The VMCAS becomes available today. That is, the current cycle for applying to veterinary school is now officially open.

I know this because I had been looking forward to this day for quite some time. Almost three years, in fact.

It’s with a bittersweet satisfaction that I think about the drastic change in my life and enjoy the free time and peace of mind to write about it.

I’ve harped upon the difficulties I faced as a non-traditional pre-vet student trying to work my way into vet school. I’ve blogged about many of the fun and carefree exploits I’ve enjoyed since turning my efforts elsewhere.

But I haven’t said much about how much better I feel these days.

Maybe that’s because it’s difficult to describe. It’s like spending months deciding on which lottery numbers to pick, only to find out that you picked the right ones after all. It’s like trying to carry twenty grocery bags into the house in one trip, and somebody comes out and takes half of them from you. It’s like the universe opening doors for you where there were only walls.

It’s kind of like landing the perfect job after you’ve been rejected from half a dozen not-perfect jobs (still can’t get over that one).

I feel happy. Even better than happy, I feel content. It’s almost unsettling to be so content. I can’t imagine one part of my life that I would choose to change right now, or one thing that I desire to have. All I have to do right now is to keep coasting along, keeping what I have and making sure never to take any of it for granted.

That isn’t to say I don’t have goals. I have big goals, and I have little goals, and I have a ton of things that I want to accomplish in life. But the greatest thing is that I’m either doing these things, or doing what needs to be done to get to where I want to be in the future. But I’m not letting any part of it consume my life anymore. As a pre-vet, I struggled constantly with wanting to find a sense of balance in my life. I could never find it, because it just wasn’t there. I thought I was following my bliss, but I wasn’t.

Yes, I still sometimes regret spending so much time and effort on something that didn’t come to fruition. I’m sure we’ve all felt the same way at some point in our lives. It’s the reason we hang on to tired relationships. It’s the reason we sit around and talk about what we could have been if we had followed a different path. It’s why we fill up our garages and basements with unfinished projects, unwilling to let them pass on to some other place without becoming what we intended them to be.

I think everyone needs some intangible element in their life—some question of what if I had done this, instead of that? It keeps life interesting, and leaves something to dream about. And that’s okay.

Especially when you already have everything you need.