I've been up late nights editing photos, and in those hours of complete quiet and stillness, my mind just gets away from me. And, with it goes my heart at times.
I feel like I sometimes hold too fast to the what ifs (both past and future).
When I was a senior in high school, I was accepted into every school I applied for, and I took an offer from Harvard. I spent my senior year asking what would happen if I didn't get in, and then I spent the following year (that I had taken off to serve as a state FFA officer) asking what if I couldn't handle it. So...I reapplied to Texas A&M and spent the majority of my college years there. It was where I needed to be, for so many reasons, but why do I still wonder what if?
After college I went to work at the White House for the Bush Administration. I stayed less than a year. My grandfather became ill, and I was worried about what might happen to him or what might happen to my career mentality if I stayed in the District too long. I was also not quite sure I was good enough for the job. Now I sometimes wish I would have given it more time.
I went to grad school. I really just wanted to be married and have a family, but it wasn't in the cards at the time. Midway through that first semester my grandfather did pass away. And I feel like I coasted through the next year and a half, using grad school as a place holder for my time until I found what I really wanted I look back and wonder why I didn't put more effort into it and what that said about me as a student.
After that, I started a job with a child abuse response agency. Instead of looking at it with the eyes of helping these precious children whose innocence was taken way too early, I became burdened by the knowledge of the sickness of those who abused them, and I turned inward, losing a lot of faith and trust in people. I only remained there a year before my heart simply couldn't handle it anymore. Again, I look back and wish I would have tried a bit harder.
Honestly there are days when I want to call my old bosses and professors up and apologize. While they may never know that I had more to give, I do, and there are days it plagues me that I wasn't at my best. Why? I have no idea. Maybe the late mights. Maybe the need to just admit it to move on. Maybe because I don't want to do that again.
I don't want to become so immersed in this photography and social media world with blogging that I am not giving my very best to those whose lives I really need to be making a difference in.
I finally have my husband and my children...what I've always wanted...and I don't want to throw that away.
I don't want to look back on these years with them at home and feel like I do about my first few jobs and grad school. I don't want to think that I missed the mark with them as well.
So, as I'm editing and questioning every aspect of this silly little business (my ability, the time, the opportunity cost) and my presence on social media (am I narcissistic, shouldn't I just let it all go, etc), I feel it comes down to this...the fear of missing out. Am I missing out on parts of motherhood that I should be more attuned to? Or, if I give these things up, will I be missing out on using my voice for something else God has planned?
I truly don't know. It all boils down to trust...that if I'm praying to do the right thing and asking for His guidance, I'll be where I need to be even if at times it doesn't quite feel like it. I'm the person who would always prefer it all in writing, and while I know that will never happen, it doesn't helping in my questioning.
So to the fear of missing out...well, we'll always be missing out on something, but then finding beauty in where we are and not always wondering about the results of a decision made in the opposite direction...maybe that's what we can hope for. Or, what I can hope for.
Because, while I wish I could go back and rewrite a few things, or in reality, just add a bit more effort and a little less worry to situations, I can't. And, right now, I love where I am so much. I just don't want these late nights of thinking to get my mind going so fast that I make these times become what those moments in my past are now.
Maybe I just need a good nap, ha!
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