Today is the Day!

I recently received a book from Eva Steortz, owner of Vita Creativa and a twenty-year veteran of entertainment marketing for Walt Disney. ​​Where Will You Be Five Years From Today? ​by Dan Zadra is a colorful gem of inspirational quotations and advice on jump starting your life. The opening page states the theme, “The purpose of this book is to stir your creative juices and to inspire you to really get in touch with your dreams. The goal is not to provide a list of what should be done with the next five years, but to stir up some exciting possibilities of what could be one.”

I’ve always been confused as to why people will make a grocery list of what they want, but will not take the time to list what they need. I am guilty of expecting time to simply deliver the goals I set in my mind that I clearly failed to actualize on a piece of paper with a plan. When I was young, I thought I had all the time in the world to check things off my mental list. Turning fifty made me realize time is measured in how I spend each hour, day, and year of my life. Life is a gift many never know completely. It is fleeting and precious.

Zadra invites us to stop being busy with the things we think we have to do and get busy with what we really want to do. I choose to write more, pray more, and love more. Where will this get me in five years? I’ll be living and not just existing.

• Johnnie Bernhard, agent Loiacono Literary Agency, and author or A Good Girl (Texas Review Press, 2017)