Just Your Average Intro...

Remember being asked in grade school to write an autobiography, maybe 500 words, about who you are, where you've been, and what your future goals are? While my oily, prepubescent classmates scribbled away, delighting in the opportunity to try to stand out from their peers, I wrote three sentences. "My name is Amber Marie Gaines. I am 12 years old and have lived in the Northwest my whole life. My goal for the future is to keep living in the Northwest." Gripping. Compelling. At least D+ worthy.  

One would think, for my lack of ambition and excitement about my past and future, the idea of blogging about myself would horrify me. And yet I find myself convinced that there is such an overabundance of the average in my life that my material is limitless. I will literally never run out of nothing to write about. To add to this, my sister Sara is partnering with me in this blogging adventure, and I feel she will bring a delightful amount of anxiety and compulsion to the project. Perhaps a word from her would now be appropriate....

My name is Sara.  I am moving to Anchorage, Alaska, in six days.  I've lived in the Northwest my whole life and decided to begin a blog because I have many a friend curious if I will be acquiring a dog sled and living in an igloo.  I actually had a couple friends think that driving to Alaska from Oregon is impossible (I'm moving to Alaska, not Hawaii).  To be quite honest, I'm a bit disappointed that that adventure won't be mine to embelish.

I didn't want to do this alone, however, so I mentioned the project to my sister, who asked a few questions and decided it was a fabulous idea.  So here we are, 11:11pm on a Monday, creating our very first blog posts.  Okay, enough explanation.  Here's the guts:

Unlike my sister, I suffer from the "Over-Achiever Complex", meaning my life is super ordinary, bordering at times on completely boring.  I reconcile myself to this fact by stressing out as often as possible, being full of anxiety, completely consumed, perpetually overwhelmed, and borderline obsessive compulsive.  That HAS to make my life much more than mediocre, right?  Unfortunately, the reality is that my life is much like Amber's.  C+ average on my best day.

I'm really not all that sad about this because I'm very much used to it.  I do feel that by embracing this simple truth, I am an expert on being average, mediocre, plain, simple, and non-dramatic.

I want to give you a big, warm "WELCOME" to our blog and I hope you enjoy being included in our marvelously mediocre lives!  Here's to not always being able to see the forest through the trees, to making life a place to feel safe, and to reconciling ourselves to, well, ourselves.   

Let us share our journey with you!