Relax, you're here.

That's a clever little sign hanging above the sidewalk, right at the border where Pompano Beach turns into Loderdale by the sea.

And as it turns out, that spot is almost directly in the middle, one of my favorite

running routes, almost exactly halfway, which at first I found kind of annoying, being that,

no, I was not where I wanted to be or intended to be, and no, I certainly could not relax.

The heat and the sun and the miles to go always begged to differ, right? False advertising.

It was not, in fact, here.

After all, here in this context suggests one has arrived.

And how can arrival feel like missing pieces and unknowns?

How can it feel like so far to go?

In the valley of despair, can one really be here?

But the more and more I took that route, the more the little sign became a landmark in and of itself.

Something that I looked forward to, its own little destination, a point in which I could both

look over my shoulder and realize how far I've come, as well as find reassurance for the journey

ahead. It was a manufacturer pat on the back, a change in narrative. Because here's the deal, it's easy to feel lost in the middle.

It just is.

It's easy to feel empty-handed after days or months or years.

It's easy to fall into the trap of never enough.

But if you step back and adjust your perspective, you see it for exactly what it is.

A beautiful process. Here doesn't have to be the predetermined destination.

Here can be the culmination of all the steps it took you to arrive at the now.

Here can be the lessons learned along the way.

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