I’ve been thinking a lot about contentment lately. As a proud card-carrying member of the Type A Nutjobs club, the goal is often paramount for me and the process is usually more of an inconvenience. I always want to get to the meal, and the process of cooking it is the barrier to my enjoyment of my eventual goal.

The trouble is, I often get to the meal and immediately start thinking about everything that comes after it. The clean-up, the dessert, the clean-up from dessert. Instead of enjoying the goal I worked toward, my mind immediately flashes forward to whatever is happening next. The next goal. And on and on it goes in a never-ending cycle of toil and accomplishment.

You can get a lot done that way. What I’ve been thinking about, though, is the pause that should take place between the completion of one goal and the assumption of another. Not taking that pause robs you of something, and my new challenge is to enjoy the pause.

For example, I got a job! I’m hired! I started my new job last week! These are all happy things!

I worked so hard to find a job all summer. It was stressful and difficult and demoralizing. When the offer letter finally came, I burst into relieved tears. I was incredulous. The whole thing didn’t seem real. A full-time job with benefits and amazing commute (I work from home) and awesome pay? I couldn’t believe it.

When I was done texting my loved ones about the news, anxiety and worry set in. Would I be able to do the job? What should I expect? What if I sucked?

This lofty goal I’d worked so hard to attain was accomplished, but I only spent a scant few hours enjoying it before my mind moved on to new things to worry and plan for. Lack of a pause in this pivotal moment robbed me of some of the joy I could have felt, and I’d like to change this.

I’d like to enjoy the process more so that the goals, once attained, can be enjoyed more fully. (I listened to a podcast on growth mindsets today, and I’m going to give it a shot. I’m not bad at enjoying the pause, it’s just an area where I have a lot of opportunities to practice and improve my skills.)

If my overarching goal during this time in my life is to heal, rebuild, and cultivate peace, the best thing I can do is to start seeking out the pauses and stop fighting them so much. Stop trying to fill them with something else and learn to be comfortable just…being. To understand that I don’t always have to be striving toward something. That it’s okay, healthy even, to exist and maintain for a bit.

I’ve worked really hard to get to a stable place. The kids are stable, our apartment is stable, my job is stable. Life is stable. I worked hard for it. How about I enjoy that for a bit, instead of casting around for new projects/stresses/tasks to fill a perceived void? If there’s a path to contentment, I think it must start there.