Day Fourteen: Taking Aim

           I tend to be a worrier.  I try not to be, but the trying doesn’t work very well.  I just end up worrying about worrying.  The other night I was worrying about work.  I was talking to my husband about my fears about my first day alone on the job.  There’s just so much to learn and remember and I was worried about it all.  After hearing me out for a while he told me that he had an army analogy for me to help me with my worrying.  He said, “In the military, you shoot the target that closest.  You shoot that one first and worry about the ones in the back later, because they are far away.  That gives you time to aim properly.  It doesn’t make sense to aim at the targets in the back first.  If you did that you would miss the ones up front and you probably wouldn’t hit the ones in the back either.  So do the same thing with life, aim for the target that closest.”  To me, this felt like an analogy for staying in the now.  I was so focused on worrying about the future that I was missing what was right in front of me.  Now I’m making it a daily practice to check, what am I aiming at today?  I want to hit my targets, but I have to be focused and aware of what position they are in so I can take careful aim.  I need to take my time with the ones that are far away (in the future) and aim for the ones that are up close and personal so I can actively participate in my life instead of just worrying about it all the time.