When We Realize We Have No Skills…

Or at least I did.

I realized it one morning. I had nothing to do that day and no means to do anything I desperately thought I was destined to do: kayak, trail run, SUP yoga, archery, camping, fishing, surfing, writing, painting…

I am woman. Hear my roar kind of crap.

I realized I have spent my whole life thinking I was that woman, but never actually working to gain any specific skills.

Sure, I have skills. I was an A student, a descent cook, athletic, and artistic. I generally did know more about random skills than most of my other female friends. I remember my best friend saw me skipping rocks at the lake one day and was astonished. I immediately felt like Joan of Arc or something. Real life skill right there.

I went to a four year college and gained a BS in well… BS. Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management. It is BS only because I have done nothing with it. Great major. I am now a receptionist.

I really did not do much as a kid to push myself past what my natural abilities already were. I thought that the skills I had already been genetically gifted to showcase made me something special and above continuing education. Like I was some sort of goddess because I could out play the boys in my neighborhood in any sport or because I had a nack for cooking.

Lazy.

I also grew up “blessed” as we would say in the South. I had a lifestyle I thought would somehow acquiesce my current state of life and there-after once daddy stopped paying for college. I at least had an allowance I had to budget while there… first world problems.

Spoiled.

Once I got a taste of the real world, I soon adjusted, but I was always left wanting more in my expectations for life. Each time I took a trip, it was never as nice as the ones that were paid for growing up. I found myself flustered when the service was not what I expected or when the food was not as luxurious when we went out to eat. Secretly, eating “bar food”, fixed-menu type restaurants made me cringe inside.

Ungrateful.

I still have no skills. No real skills. I lost my mom at the age of 4 and realized I have always felt the world owed me something: that I had already done the hard part and now I was going to sit around and let the world give back to me what it had taken. I do not blame any one who reads this if they judge me for my puerile notions in my youth. I deserve it. I have no excuses anymore. What do I do as a lazy, spoiled, ungrateful millennial?

I own up to it.

Are there others out there that feel this same sense of failure? Others that are ashamed at what their life has become? Should we be defined by our career or our skills, or should we be defined by something that solicits provocation? Something that gives us purpose?

I think that the answer is all of these things. We are defined by what it is that drives us to pursue (or not pursue) those interests. What we wear, eat, watch… how we play, interact, empathize are all things that define who we are and where we will go. The consequences are real. We can be the vessel of change for good and adventurous challenges in our lives…impacting others for the better as we grow ourselves into more through experience…or we can be a vessel what waits around for life to happen to us…sucking everyone around us dry.

I have waited too long. I have sucked too many people dry.

It is time to own up to my failures and plunge head first into the abyss. I will write about my experiences as I go and hopefully, as I grow, I will begin to define myself in a new light…in a way I can be proud yet humble of the self I was and how that old self has become a stepping stone for the woman I am meant to be.