I was taking a break between the last daycare kid going home for the night, and getting started on dinner, and decided to watch some of the Simpsons. Too tired to retain the plot, but what stuck with me was that Lisa had cheated on a test, and had a flashforward of the consequences of her mistake, which included having to attend Brown instead of Harvard, and thus, being cursed to a life of mediocrity.
As a former Gilmore Girls addict, this immediately brought to mind the angst of Rory Gilmore and her single-minded pursuit of academic elitism and over-exagerated fear of not being superior to all of her peers.
Then I thought back to the days when I walked that line, if briefly, and the horribly debilitating blow to my self-esteem when life turned out to work differently than TV shows.
It took me a long time to realize what my actual dreams even are (something I'm just now beginning to discover), because I spent my formative years trying to dream what others expected me to be dreaming. I did well academically, so I tried to dream of going Ivy League, but I couldn't have told you why...and that obviously didn't pan out. I had some skill dancing and singing, and had some success acting, so I tried to dream of becoming a professional performer...but it only took one private-life encounter with a fan of the semi-pro comedy troupe I used to be in, and one stalker during my days singing at a theme park, to make it very clear to me that I would loathe a life of celebrity.
Lisa Simpson got me thinking about this. As I look at my first couple of blog entries, and see how exceptionally average my days are, I think how the younger me would have shuddered with despair at not being unique, special, or in any way outstanding. I am, for all intents and purposes, an amateur artist (drama and speech at a small-town high school, but I count it as art) and a stay-at-home mom who does daycare out of her home. It doesn't get much more pedantic.
But somehow, I am more at peace with my life as it is now than I ever was during the more adventuresome chapters of my someday biography. I enjoy what I do for money, in spite of the fact that my income is probably the smallest it has ever been. I love our home, I love our neighborhood and our neighbors. I have somehow managed to find the one man on the planet who loves me in my entirety, and not "in spite" of anything. We have a wonderful child who has just enough slip-ups to remind us he is human and not some stepford mutant. We have the most remarkable church home that feels like our extended family - something I didn't think I would be able to find again after moving away and having to leave Zion.
I never did attend an Ivy League college. I never became famous (or even notorious). My epitaph will not reveal me to have made any of the huge impacts on the universe that I had planned in my youth.
You know something? That doesn't scare me anymore.
As a former Gilmore Girls addict, this immediately brought to mind the angst of Rory Gilmore and her single-minded pursuit of academic elitism and over-exagerated fear of not being superior to all of her peers.
Then I thought back to the days when I walked that line, if briefly, and the horribly debilitating blow to my self-esteem when life turned out to work differently than TV shows.
It took me a long time to realize what my actual dreams even are (something I'm just now beginning to discover), because I spent my formative years trying to dream what others expected me to be dreaming. I did well academically, so I tried to dream of going Ivy League, but I couldn't have told you why...and that obviously didn't pan out. I had some skill dancing and singing, and had some success acting, so I tried to dream of becoming a professional performer...but it only took one private-life encounter with a fan of the semi-pro comedy troupe I used to be in, and one stalker during my days singing at a theme park, to make it very clear to me that I would loathe a life of celebrity.
Lisa Simpson got me thinking about this. As I look at my first couple of blog entries, and see how exceptionally average my days are, I think how the younger me would have shuddered with despair at not being unique, special, or in any way outstanding. I am, for all intents and purposes, an amateur artist (drama and speech at a small-town high school, but I count it as art) and a stay-at-home mom who does daycare out of her home. It doesn't get much more pedantic.
But somehow, I am more at peace with my life as it is now than I ever was during the more adventuresome chapters of my someday biography. I enjoy what I do for money, in spite of the fact that my income is probably the smallest it has ever been. I love our home, I love our neighborhood and our neighbors. I have somehow managed to find the one man on the planet who loves me in my entirety, and not "in spite" of anything. We have a wonderful child who has just enough slip-ups to remind us he is human and not some stepford mutant. We have the most remarkable church home that feels like our extended family - something I didn't think I would be able to find again after moving away and having to leave Zion.
I never did attend an Ivy League college. I never became famous (or even notorious). My epitaph will not reveal me to have made any of the huge impacts on the universe that I had planned in my youth.
You know something? That doesn't scare me anymore.
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