My life, for almost as long as I can remember it, has been a constant run on a metaphorical hamster wheel.

When I was a child, I spent a lot of time bored. I would fill that time with reading or writing or schoolwork or watching television, but I was very lonely a lot of the time.  I had friends, but I didn’t really spend time with them on the weekends and couldn’t call them on the phone. It was often just my mom and me at home, from the time I was 7 until I was 16 and she died.  My mom was wonderful but she was often tired after long days of work. I hated feeling alone more than anything in the world.  I often felt invisible or as if my attempts at being visible just meant that I was being bothersome.

After my mom died, I had a strange newfound freedom (since she had only let me participate in a few things that she thought were the best uses of my time), but I hadn’t practiced making wise choices with my time or setting boundaries for myself.  I was lost, but I was busy, and busy felt right. It felt productive and good and valuable.  It let me hide a lot of the pain from losing my mom.  It made others admire me.  It opened new worlds from me, led me away from my hometown, and to leadership and success.  I didn’t have time to think because I became so busy doing, mostly for others, and working to please them.

I did that for almost 25 years, to a greater or lesser degree.  In my worst years, I ended up very ill, my body forcing me to get the rest my mind would not allow.  I lost relationships with people I loved dearly and sacrificed time with others with whom I wish I had more moments.  I kept moving forward, but it never felt like enough.

At the heart of it all, I was running away from the profound loneliness I felt inside.  I was addicted to the doing, the constant movement that allowed me to ignore the present moment.  I wanted to feel like I was accomplishing something and that someone saw me.

In this last year, and particularly in this last few weeks and months, I’ve been working to step away from the hamster wheel.

It is so hard.

I live in a society and work in a profession that calls me to run faster on the wheel, to take on more, in which there are always demands.

It is up to me to stop running.  To stand still. To get off the wheel. To breathe. To write.

It is frightening because it is unfamiliar.

But, each time that I move away from the wheel, I am reminded of who I am.  And, although it is hard, I am learning to remember that my worth is in more than what I do, but also in who I am.

This weekend, I read The Giver by Lois Lowry (because I’m reading the books my son has been assigned for school alongside him this year so we can talk about them in our own family book club).  In reading it, I was reminded that it is only through knowing pain that we can see the color, the beauty, the other feelings, in life.  We must remember the pain; we must go through it, if we are to get elsewhere.

So this post is a moment when I have stepped off the wheel, when I have reclaimed some time.  Watching a television show with my son, reading with my daughter before bed, spending time with friends, breathing. I am taking steps away from the wheel, and walking down a path of greater intentionality.

It is hard, but I am learning what it feels like to be present.  And that is a big thing.