There is no finish line

I want to be done so I can be loved. Maybe the ultimate checklist is separating the two.

Written on February 7th in late-afternoon shade at Everglades National Park, my keyboard clicks barely audible above the rhythm of pileated woodpeckers.

Reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone makes me realize (not for the first time, but I’m terrible at internalizing this morsel) the obvious: There is no finish line. There will never be a finish line. No streamers, no cheers, no clear-cut you did it, well done (note the past tense) because until I die, I will still be doing.

Sean and I used to talk about “moving the goalposts” in regards to Scout’s fear reactivity. Those first months after I realized the extent of her behavioral problems, I told every trainer we consulted with that I just wanted to take her for a walk—a boring neighborhood walk—without her freaking out and embarrassing me.

Eventually we could go on walks. They weren’t seamless, but they were possible, and I yearned for more possibilities. Now I want to go on busier walks, longer hikes. Now I want to sit at a brewery, a coffee shop, the restaurant near our apartment complex. Now I want to go on outings with other dogs. Now I want trick titles. A Canine Good Citizen certificate. Engaged games of tug in distracting environments. Twenty thousand Instagram followers. A more polished narrative.

Mostly, what I wanted with Scout was the same thing I want in all areas of my life: to be seen. Not just observed, but seen, and specifically seen as successful. Each time we made progress, the line for “success” moved with us because there was always someone ahead doing it better—and our past selves fell further behind, failing to remind me just how far we’d come unless I actually sat down, took out the binoculars (read: scrolled my camera roll or Instagram memories), and tracked their blurred forms.

I rarely think about life with Scout feeling different now. It’s not that we crossed a finish line—we didn’t—but that I’ve come to see our journey as something beautiful and flawed and ongoing. As the end of our shared life approaches, faster each year, I run from finality and can’t believe I ever craved it. If we finish all the struggles, then eventually we will finish the joy. I never want our time to be past tense.

Why is this hard to translate to the rest of my experiences? Haven’t my insights about the pet world—training and emotions and optimization and all the rest—always fit rather perfectly into my growth as a human being beyond the “dog nerd” label?

I hold the knowledge itself: Be present. Life is a series of nows. Don’t burn the future to stay warm. Sometimes I act on the knowledge, relishing the sun’s warmth or Sean’s skin or the fact that I can still at 27 lose myself in a story like I did as a kid.

But often I live at odds with this thing I express as a tenet. I act as if there is always a finish line, and it’s just around the next bend, and once I finally cross it I can breathe, I can sleep, I can relax without guilt—I can settle into my life, I can hold my own against the world, I can love myself.

Once I leave my nine-to-five marketing agency job. Once I land regular freelance clients. Once we move into our converted van. Once I make arbitrary-number thousand dollars a month. Once I finish the first draft of my book. Once I finish the second draft of my book. Once I get published in a magazine I admire. Once I have arbitrary-number “real” bylines. Once I find an agent for my book. Once my book is published.

But I know from meeting some of these milestones that I can’t hang satisfaction on the others. If I do publish a book and it’s well received? I will surely stack another goal atop its podium. If it doesn’t touch people the way I hope? I will punish myself with more hoops to jump through and the futile promise that once I clear them, then I can feel successful. Not now, though. Never now.

Because I am ostensibly a minimalist—my material belongings are few—I have convinced myself I do not struggle with our society’s “more more more” mantra. I mean, I travel full time without much in a converted van! I haven’t worked a “traditional” job in three years! I watch almost every sunrise! My physical space is less than seventy square feet (and I basically never complain about that) and I know at least a few people look up to me as a model of peace and contentment.

How could I have a problem with wanting?

Well, goes the too-simple but too-true answer, because I am human. Because I am a creature. Because I will never carve perfect, unchanged, permanent meaning out of my life—I will never finish my own story the way I sometimes finish an essay thinking wow, that wrapped up rather nicely. My accomplishments, my wants, myself will never be wrapped up. Isn’t that the beauty of being alive?I don’t want to be done.

And yet I do with so many things. I want to be done so I can be loved. Maybe the ultimate item on my checklist is separating the two.