I’m furiously running down the street, backpack in hand, with only two minutes to spare.

I’m late.

To pickup Molly, the four-year-old (the cutest one ever) that I babysit on Monday nights. That’s the last thing anyone wants to be late to. I’m imagining her small face crying while sobbing, “She forgot me!” My heart is breaking as I’m struggling for air. I’m too out of shape to be running this hard, though I’m wearing nerdy, mom-esq tennis shoes which are decidedly helping my cause. To match my mom sneakers, I’m sporting a blue headband and a purple hoodie that I bought on vacation.

I wish I could say that it’s 2003 and I’m 17. But it’s present day and I’m 27. Yet here I am wearing a hoodie, sneakers, carrying a backpack, and on my way to my babysitting job. Suddenly I have a revelation: 27 looks exactly like 17. (Though in my defense, backpacks are back in style…)

I arrive at the daycare out of breath and heaving. Molly is unphased, she’s singing Old Mcdonald. We go home and start our normal routine of dinner and games. So I’m getting my ass kicked during Candyland and I start thinking about 27. I definitely thought it was going to be different. I remember thinking that by my late-20’s I would be married, have exactly two kids and own a nice home. I’d have super important job where I wore suits every day and rode my motorcycle to work (I’m still a badass after all).

Life is funny like that. Every day, my roommate, my mom, or my best friend has to talk me off the ledge. Because I’m going somewhere, but it’s really hard to not be there yet. I’m in transition, as I think most 20-somethings are. I have pretty ambitious goals and I know that these things take time. So day after day, I’m busting my butt to try and get my book published and do more public speaking (my two passions). But in the meantime, I’m paying my bills with babysitting, and that’s totally ok.

It’s hard though, not to have instant results and success. Everyone always talks about the journey, but I feel like this is the part of the road trip where we’re just driving on long, boring stretches of highway, and although I know we can’t avoid them, I just want to arrive already. I keep reminding myself, steady progress forward, pay the tolls, make some pit stops and I’ll get there eventually.

-Olive