The Best Advice I've Ever Received

I'm an awkward human being. I was an awkward kid, I'm an awkward adult and with luck, I'll be an awkward old lady someday. As a child, I was constantly bombarded with the ways that I was socially delayed, behind others. Other kids had friendships, sleepovers, the attention of others, and I could barely stammer my way through a conversation. Other kids had grace, charm and hand-eye coordination and I barely spoke, got lost in books and let anxiety get the best of me.

It became worse when I was a teenager. First of all, even though I spoke more, I had no social grace. I could not express my wants, my interests and my friendships always seemed shallow. While others made deep connections, even my closest friends were no more than close acquaintances. We hung out at school, but my awkward personality and discomfort with getting close didn't lead to too many invitations.

Then, dating came around.

While all of my peers were dating, I couldn't make that kind of connection. I almost did once, with a boy in my journalism class, and ran away in a panic after two weeks of "dating", which I'm sure came as a surprise to the boy. At sixteen, I had the academic behavior and maturity of an adult, but an inability to connect. First kiss at sixteen, sure, but I didn't any further than an awkward kiss outside the classroom.

Then came the right of passage teenagers spend years waiting for - the driver's license. I received my permit right on time, at age fifteen-and-a-half. Theoretically, I understood the rules of the road and the dynamics of driving. Theoretically. Acing the written test, I felt that I was ready to get driving.

On the road I was a mess. I white-knuckled the steering wheel and gave my poor mother a heart attack. Taking the behind-the-wheel test was a disaster: I failed my test three times before I got it, and it was during one of my failed attempts that my mother told me this simple statement:

"You're on nobody's timeline but your own."

That statement hit me hard as a teenager, and today I still look back on those words when I feel insecure about not keeping up with the Joneses. I wasn't competing with my friends and family members in the game of life. It didn't matter if I didn't have a driver's license at sixteen, and it doesn't matter today at thirty-one that I'm not married with children and working a six figure job. While there may be an average time frame for things to get done, we as humans are not averages.

We spend so much of our precious time comparing ourselves to others and that needs to stop. Now social media makes this problem worse, as we stare into a small window, looking into the lives of others. Jealousy threatens to bloom as we realize that Mary is a successful business woman in her mid-thirties, and Chris is married with a beautiful family. It doesn't matter that James is a CEO and you're still not where you want to be in your career.

While this insecurity is natural, human, we need to force ourselves to look past those feelings. Why do you want what someone else has? Who is judging you for not being there yet? While I don't deny that outsiders will judge and there will be people who look down on you for where you're at in life, they don't matter. The majority of the judgement comes from within yourself. You are not living on anyone else's schedule.

Nobody else's timeline matters. Nobody but your own.