I was flipping through covers at the bookstore and I came across Russel Simmons’ “Do You!: 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success.” One of the chapter’s titles caught me. It said something like, “I’ve heard of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but I never heard of someday.”

It got me thinking that subconsciously pushing the snooze button on my personal life is a form of laziness. Not in a way that could hurt a profession or a pocket book, but in a way that could hurt the soul. I needed to apply the same pitbull instinct to my personal goals for self fulfillment that I utilized at work. I needed to be able to work harder at working for me, whether that meant taking on fewer responsibilities or simply saying no.

I saw my family six days out of the entire summer and that was in intervals. I read one and a half books out of the several that I had pulled from my bookshelves at home — books that I had planned to read months prior — and my new niece treated me like an unwanted step-child. I did, however, get knee-deep in the grittiness of hard work and sweated from an experience that will supposedly pay off in the future. What I didn’t do was satisfy the thirst for life that I have right now.

Waiting for the right time to make the better choice was a waste of energy and effort because in this world, it’s true that we only live once. I met a girl who never made New Year’s resolutions because she told me it was a sign of fear: a fear of action. Instead of wanting to succeed at a goal and break into the unfamiliar and take pride in an accomplishment, you put it off for another day, or another year, when the results seemed further away and less important. Eventually, they’re so far away, it doesn’t matter if the goal is achieved at all.

Marianne Williamson understood my dilemma, with her poem “Our Deepest Fear.” I’m proud with what my résumé states and glad that it’s not at all padded. I take pride in the fact that my coworkers come to me for advice and that I am a model example of a job well done, but it would have been nice to see my little brother’s track meet or enjoy the sore pleasure of a yoga class. Professionally, I am a queen, but in a personal light for self, I’m a peasant.

I recently had to make a choice: for the love or for the money. I went back and forth, telling myself I could do both, knowing it was either one or the other.

At the end of the day, I didn’t want my senior year to be remembered as a coffee-influenced hangover of chaos, exhaustion and loss of sanity. I realized that I didn’t have to explain my choice to anyone but myself, because most the people surrounding me wouldn’t have any say in where my life would be even a year from now. The day will come when I will reflect on what I should have done with my life, what I could have done to make myself happier and what I would have done if money wasn’t a defining point.

Instead of waiting for the start of a new year, a new semester, the next Sunday, my someday is today. For the first time, I chose to work with what works for me. To be exhausted and labored over myself and not for the bigger paycheck. Money is always going to be factor, and I’m always going to be broke compared to someone else, so why not, at least in some way, do what I love to do?

Ashley Brown is a State News staff writer. Reach her at brownas8@msu.edu.