10 Always Has Been MY Number

I haven't completely nailed down how or why, but 2010 feels different.

Throughout most of 2009 I was feeling a little lost. I was no longer a "recent graduate" and I still didn't feel like an adult. I still felt very much like a college kid, but there was something about that feeling that didn't seem right.

Don't get me wrong...2009 was a great year. Look at my last post and you'll have to agree.

But 2010 is going to be different and I feel it.

I love life in Louisville and I love my friends but I know this is not the life I want forever. I also know life goes quickly and it doesn't wait around for you. It will sort of just happen if you don't make it happen. (There is a difference in those two. Hopefully you can understand it.)

There are certain goals/dreams I've always had for my life and they have become clearer to me in the past year; probably because of the reality that I am now capable of progressing towards them. However, I'll only actually get there IF I start working towards them and not just living day to day expecting them to suddenly happen.

Probably the hardest part of working towards any goal is accepting and working through the things that are out of your control, because there will always be some of these things. Those who know me know that I hate the idea of fear taking control of a situation. Unfortunately, I admit that part of my hesitance to move forward is the fear of letting go of things I want in the NOW but are really out of my control as to whether or not I have them.

We've all created plans before. Plans for a school or work project. Plans for a social event. Plans for a vacation. These plans are created on the premise of an order of actions/events on a time-line, but I think it's safe to say that we've all experienced things not going to plan and, more often than not, the plan's time-line gets jumbled and things occur out of order. In the end, things always pans out, as long as our focus stayed clear and with every fork in the road we simply made the best decision for the given situation. With this we get the right and best end result. Sometimes that end looks like that original goal the plan set out of us to achieve, but sometimes it's different. The things we learn along the way may change what the perfect end goal actually is.

In the beginning of the movie A Lot Like Love, Oliver (the Ashtin Kutcher character), a fairly recent college graduate, explains that he has a plan to get his "ducks in a row". His seven year time-line was that he would graduate, work, meet a girl in the process, become successful, get married and live happily ever after. Then he finds himself seven years down the road and lots has happened--both good and bad--but the plan has fallen to pieces. Still, the movie ends happily.

I've never had a set in stone, hard plan, but I've had a vision of how things would come to pass in my life. Needless to say, even this "loose" plan seems to not want to completely fall together as I envisioned. So the fear comes in accepting that certain pieces are not for me to decide and simply going with what God does have planned for me in the hear and now. Then, I must continue to work towards that dream by focusing on the areas I do have control over. Fear will continue to be there but I cannot let it dictate and hold me back from the things I am capable of doing. Honestly, the one plan I put the most faith and trust in is the one I don't have any control over. That's what faith is about, right?

So what does 2010 mean for Peat? It's time to step forward and accept the responsibility of my life and all I've ever dreamed for it to be and start making it happen and not letting the fear of the unknown or the fear of letting go of my "plan" slow me down.

Mom is right: from my early days of basketball, 10 always has been my number. I think this is my year.