Just Some Thoughts

I recently finished watching The Office for the first time (thanks honey for helping me become more culturally relevant) and I really liked the way they ended the series and all that, but the thing that stood out to me the most was Pam’s character development throughout the whole series and the way they chose to portray her. She is a character that is at the same time frustrating and deeply relatable. We watch her go through things and not stand up for herself and push down what she truly wants and we want to tell her to just go for it because we can see so clearly what she is missing.

Sometimes I feel so much like Pam. Her character is devised to be as ordinary as possible, a dependable yet easily forgotten shadow in the background of everybody else’s life, playing a protagonist role in her own story. She is a character that is related to by women everywhere, women who for some reason tend to accustom themselves to the idea of living an ordinary life, of settling down and scraping by and keeping the risk in their lives low the way she spends most of the show doing.

I think it can be incredibly easy to tell ourselves that we are nothing special, that we’re not talented, that we don’t have the ability to be anything more than average. I grew up in a family and in a culture that was always telling me to be something more, that I was special and talented, that I had something amazing to give to the world. For years of my life I believed that and my mind was always swimming with dreams, ways I could give to the world and live a big and beautiful life. But for some reason the older I’ve gotten the harder it’s been for me to stay in touch with that. The more ordinary and dull I’ve felt. My life consists of working a full time job in an office every day and going to school and sitting at a computer every night and trying to find time in between it all to blog and read and exercise and do the other things that are important to me. I love my life and am so grateful for it but sometimes I feel like a gigantic piece of me is missing and it can be so hard not to focus on that feeling.

I have always wanted to influence people through social media and through the written word, but most days I look at all the amazing influencers out there who seem to have so much more going for them than I do, so many more skills and connections than I do, and it feels like an impossible dream. I want to touch people’s lives through education and mentoring, and I have been blessed enough to have several experiences with that in my life already, but I want to reach more people and do more and I’m just not sure how to go about it yet. And most of all, honestly the biggest dream in my heart since my first memories is to be a mother. To have my own babies to love and treasure and raise and teach and guide through life and give the gift of an amazing childhood to. I think about the day when I’ll become a mother so often and it seems that the more lacking I feel in some aspects of my life the more I dwell on it and dream about it. I have so many fears and uncertainties when it comes to being a mother but it’s still so hard to wait patiently sometimes for the day my heart longs for so badly. My heart and mind are so mixed up and full of emotions when I think about it. The best way I can describe it is the feeling of something missing. I know that one day not as far away as I think it is I won’t feel that way anymore, but it doesn’t stop it from being hard now, you know?

I don’t want to complain because I truly am so full of gratitude about the life I have been blessed with, my amazing hard-working husband, my job and the wonderful people in my life. I mainly just want to say that if you are also feeling inadequate, or like you are missing something, or like there are things you want to go for and always dream about but you’re just too afraid, you are not alone. We all struggle with these fears and desires and there are some days we feel brave and some days we feel so small we want to pretend the entire world doesn’t exist. But we are all capable of bigger things than we think we are, and every dream planted in your heart is there for a reason. Having faith in this as I press forward from day to day is what keeps me going through these uncertain times, that and gratitude for the present and the things I have now. I hope if you are reading this it has helped you in some way, because writing it has healed my heart a little. Even in the most ordinary of places and moments, an extraordinary future is being prepared for you. Just believe in it.