Regrets & Ridiculousness

I am someone who lives with a lot of regret. 

Literally, I regret a million things. It's weird and unsettling and frankly, very unattractive. 

I regret not trying out for the part of Belle in our sixth grade play of Beauty and the Beast. I remember standing in the doorway of the auditorium the afternoon of auditions and pacing back and forth talking myself out of it.  When I finally did sit down to wait, I waited and waited as everyone around me got up on stage and sang their song until the teacher asked if anyone else wanted to try. And I sat there some more, and said no, not me. Actually I didn't even say that because that actually just happened in my head. In reality I didn't say anything at all. 

I regret moments I should've spoken up when instead I kept my mouth shut. I regret the prom dress I let my parents talk me into because they both hated the one I actually wanted. I regret the many, many, MANY majors I chose in college, and even the many colleges I bopped around at rather than staying in one place and really thinking about my choices. I regret not going into anthropology like I wanted to because it was a random weird choice that fascinated me, because people and where we all come from and what it all means mattered to me. It still does. 

I regret that I'm not doing something more creative with my job, that I'm constantly filled with a sense of what if? what now? what next? That instead of being an outlet for me, it's a source of anxiety-- the travel time, the hours spent working at home after the work day should've ended when I could or should be spending time living life, that for one entire school year I cried almost every day because of the threats I was getting from family members of my students, so much so that I was calling out sick just because I was too filled with uneasiness about how my day would go that I couldn't make myself face it. I regret not moving across the country or making more of an effort to speak Spanish when I was younger or finding something I was passionate about and sticking with it. 

Right now, I'm awake at almost 4 am having regrets over my wedding dress, a week shy of being nine months post wedding. It's ridiculous. I am ridiculous. But here I am in all my regret filled glory, thinking of the wedding dress I said yes to and then immediately asked my mom to cancel roughly ten minutes after she dropped me off at home. Here I am. 4 am. I have to go into school tomorrow to work on my classroom for the first time all summer and I'm up thinking about something so pointless. 

George says I'm always waiting for the next big thing and in part, he's right. 

He's right. 

I am. I'm afraid of living a life full of regret. I'm afraid of waking up sixty years from now and feeling like I didn't make a difference somehow. I'm afraid of looking back at my life and feeling like I should have done more. So much more. I'm afraid of becoming someone who is so blinded by her regret that she doesn't recognize all of the beauty in every moment she gets. 

So yes. I'm someone who lives with a lot of regret. But I'm also someone who recognizes that crazy flaw in myself and how ridiculous I sound  and am working on it. I'm a work in progress. 

with a heart full of hope & a mind full of dreams. 

a valuable life

 "Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void. "

-Kathleen Kelly, You've Got Mail

I've loved writing for as long as I can remember. I can still see myself in my second grade classroom, writing this epic story about a girl on an adventure through the woods and eagerly sitting in the corner waiting, while my peer review partner read my rough draft. I could not wait for her to tell me what she thought, and then just keep going and going and going.

I wanted to be that person, the creative one, the writer-- the person with the power to create something from their imaginations that would transport a reader to another place, another time, allow them to have adventures, new experiences, challenge their every day thoughts and open their mind to something new, something different.

That's what books have always done for me, and in turn the writers themselves.

Anyway, I started this blog years ago at a time when I needed an outlet. Somewhere I could just pour my feelings out onto pages about things I never really felt like anyone was talking about, or at least sharing out loud. For a long time I never even told anyone I had a blog, mostly out of fear of being judged, or even feeling like it was a part of me I wanted to just share anonymously, rather than have people I actually knew get to see a part of me I maybe was not ready to share. Little by little out it came: " I have a blog" became something I actually said to people, shared it, spoke about it.

And then, then it started to get wishy washy. I started following blog trends I saw from other bloggers and lost the point of why I started my own in the first place. I abandoned it. And here I am, haven't written anything meaningful here in my little corner of the world for over a year and barely very much in the months leading up to those post that were few and far between. I am here now again, because I need to be. I need to have more of myself out on a page more than a facebook post can provide me - the good, the bad, and the most random.

If you're still here and maybe still interested in keeping up, then hi, hello! When I started this little blog of mine I was newly turned twenty four, heartbroken, confused about my future, unsure of what lay ahead. So much has happened since then. So, so much. You can go back and read from the beginning if you'd like, or just begin here. If you go back, skip to the really good posts, the ones I poured my heart and soul into, and ignore all the ones filled with random fluff. Not to say just disregard them, just know whatever direction I wanted this space to go in, it wasn't the fluffy post filled kind.

And now..well now I'm thirty one, navigating through my first year of marriage, entering into my fourth year of teaching in my own classroom, taking my thirties one day at a time and all that comes with them. Still asking myself if my life is small, while still being very much valuable. Still a little lost, still filled with many hopes and dreams, still with a need for more-- more joy, more experiences, more fresh air. but here. I am here.

thanks for being here too.

with a heart full of hope & a mind full of dreams.