The other day, I caught myself doing something I do way too often. I was supposed to be doing something productive, but instead I found myself looking at the apartments in a country I’d love to live in someday. One apartment turned into five, then ten. Before I knew it, I was comparing neighborhoods, checking nearby grocery stores, and imagining what life might look like if I lived there. The funny thing is that I wasn’t actually planning a move, at least not anytime soon. That’s when I realized how much time I spend thinking about future versions of my life.

I’ve always been like that. Even when I was younger, I spent a lot of time imagining what adulthood would look like. Not every detail, but the general picture. Where I’d live, what kind of work I’d do, and what life would feel like once I finally had everything figured out. Back then, I assumed life followed a fairly straightforward path. You set goals, work toward them, reach them, and then move on to the next thing.

Looking back, I’m not entirely sure where I got that idea from. Maybe it came from movies. Maybe social media played a role. Maybe it was simply the way I viewed adulthood when I was younger. Whatever the reason, real life turned out to be much messier than I expected.

The older I get, the more I realize that people are constantly adjusting. Plans change, priorities shift, and things that once felt important sometimes lose their place. At the same time, unexpected opportunities and interests appear out of nowhere. A lot of the assumptions I had about my future turned out to be wrong, not because I failed, but because I changed. I think that’s the part nobody talks about enough.

People often ask whether you’ve achieved the goals you had years ago, but very few people ask whether those goals still make sense to you. Some of mine stayed the same, while others quietly disappeared along the way. There are still things I want, though. Living abroad is one of them. Every now and then I find myself browsing job listings, looking at different cities, or wondering what my routine would be like somewhere else. Then I close everything and go back to answering emails or figuring out what I’m making for dinner. Reality has a way of bringing you back pretty quickly.

And honestly, I don’t think that’s a bad thing anymore.

For a while, I treated my current life like it was temporary. Almost like it was something I needed to get through before the “real” version started. Once I reached a certain goal, then I’d relax. Then I’d be satisfied. Then everything would make sense. The problem was that every time I reached something I’d been working toward, I immediately found something else to focus on. A new goal, a new plan, or a new achievement that I thought would finally make me feel accomplished.

Eventually, I realized I could keep doing that forever. There will always be another goal, another plan, or another version of life waiting somewhere ahead. That’s what made me realize that waiting for life to begin is a losing strategy. Life is already happening while we’re busy planning the next version of it.

It’s happening during the commute to work, while standing in line at the grocery store, during random conversations, workouts after a long day, and evenings that seem completely unremarkable at the time. None of those moments feel important when they’re happening. Yet when I look back on the last few years, those are often the things I remember most. Not the plans or the timelines, but the everyday life that happened in between.

I still want things for my future. I still have goals, and I still spend way too much time looking at job postings and imagining different versions of my life. But I’m trying to spend a little less time waiting for the future and a little more time paying attention to what’s already here.

I haven’t completely figured that out yet. Maybe nobody really does. But I think that’s okay.