Yesterday was my weekly volunteer day for the local branch of The Ophelia Project.  I’ve been involved in this organization for a year and a half and it is an opportunity to mentor and meet regularly with local disadvantaged teenage girls looking for extra support.  As you might imagine it is valuable for the girls, and a rewarding experience for me.  But yesterday I knew we’d be short-handed with a lot planned for our 90-minute meeting, and I was feeling a bit anxious.  Before I even left the house I was running lists through my head to insure that everything would be handled, and found myself thinking what a relief it would be when it was all over.  Then something clicked in my head and I realized that this was exactly what I wanted to be doing—in fact I’d actually gone out of my way and signed up for the opportunity.  But instead of relishing in the current experience, I was worrying over details and longing for it to be over.  In other words, I wasn’t “here”—I was somewhere else.

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