Slow down, you're doing fine

You know when you hear a song for the first time in a while, and it strikes a chord it never hit before?

One of my favourite mindless ways to listen to music is through Spotify’s Daylists. A curated playlist with questionable titles, that sometimes contain exactly what you need to hear.

On this occasion, the song that sung to me like no one else in the world would hear it, was Vienna by Billy Joel.

As someone who, admittedly, burnt out after years of self-inflicting insurmountable pressure, the song’s lyrics hit me like a tonne of bricks.

“Slow down, you're doing fine

You can't be everything you want to be before your time

Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight

Too bad but it's the life you lead

You're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need

Though you can see when you're wrong, you know

You can't always see when you're right, you're right”

I have an unfortunate habit of convincing myself time is running out, and that I need to have my next move all figured out. (Confessions of a Type A).

This can be a pretty uncomfortable place to be and makes living in the now even harder than necessary.

However, it surprises me, with each lap around the sun, how much my perspective on what matters has shifted and narrowed.

As cliche as it is, the older you get, the more you realise how young you’ve been.

The things that are meant to be will happen when the time is right, and as annoyingly painstaking as it is, we can’t always control when that is.

I can’t say that my pressure valve has been fully released, but I am doing my best to remember that if something hasn’t happened yet, or I’m not at the stage of life that I thought I’d be, then it is before my time. 

It is of course, what Billy would want.