There’s a scene in the movie Mean Girls that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. If you haven’t seen it, just please do yourself a favor and go watch it right now. It’s on Netflix, so you really have no excuse not to. Anyway. Near the end of the movie, all of the girls in the entire school have congregated in the gym to have a discussion about their feelings. One girl stands up in the room filled with strangers and works up the courage to pour out her heart to everyone. The reward for her vulnerability? Damien (who is the only male in the room and definitely was not invited to the party), shouts out, “She doesn’t even go here!”
In the blogging world, I am that girl. Me and every other person who decides to put themselves out there and take whatever weird and wonderful words we have swimming around in our heads and set them free into the sewer vast ocean of ideas that is the Internet. And Damien? He’s not someone who told me I’m not funny or that I don’t know how to write. He isn’t the big blog sites that have turned my articles down or the likes and shares I didn’t get on Facebook. I don’t actually need anyone to do that for me, because I do it to myself. I am the one who tells myself constantly, “You don’t belong here.”
I know that I could probably search Google for 19 hours a day and never stop coming up with new blogs to read and discover. It’s hard not to feel like there’s no place for me in this jam-packed “gym” full of hilarious, talented, successful writers. But the thing is, just like the awkward girl from the wrong school who wished to bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles that everyone could eat and be happy, I too, have a lot of feelings. And even though I’m new here and there are far more experienced people all around me doing the very same thing (probably better), I’m going to share those feelings anyway.
This post will be the first of many accounts about my forays into the “somethings” I am aspiring to become. Hopefully I can lace a little humor into each of my adventures, but I’m sure a few will be a little more serious, too. Just like anyone and everyone else out there, some of my aspirations are huge, crazy dreams that seem as out of reach as the last box of quinoa on the top shelf at the grocery store, and others would be totally attainable if I worked up the strength to re-allocate my Netflix time. No matter how big or small my ambitions may be, I’ve found that the most important first step in accomplishing anything is to hold yourself accountable to someone, and the only thing better than holding yourself accountable to one someone is holding yourself to many someones. With that in mind, I figured, who better to share that honor with than my friends, family, and (hopefully) a whole bunch of strangers on the Internet?
So, here we go. In the words of Kevin McAllister (a wise and noble 8 year old who is the source of much of my courage and many of my favorite quotes), “This is it. Don’t get scared now.”
xox k
THE ASPIRING SOMETHING 