Reach for the stars

So here I am, age 28...and I am a mother. A pretty good mother if I have to say so myself. But I'm not the greatest role model. I swear, and occasionally lose my temper, I eat too much sugar and burp at the dinner table. My kids adore me of course, because they don't know any better, and I adore them because they are new, and beautiful, and so impressionable, and of course because they are my kids. But I want to leave more of a mark on them then just a few bad habits and a wealth of advice I myself never followed before having kids of my own. I want more than good health, and happiness for them, I want them to always reach for the stars. Right now they are of the age where the belief in Santa Claus, and Transformers, Boogie Monsters, and Princesses define their world and assure them that anything is possible. One day though, they will reach a point in their life where they will have to define reality for themselves, and decide what is possible and what isn't.

Ten years ago I decided as I graduated high school that writing was a dream that would never come to fruition. I was full of self doubt and terror when contemplating the world as a broke novelist. So I shelved that dream as just that - a dream and never attempted to really put pen to paper - until now.

I'm writing a novel, actually two. I'm writing them for myself, and I'm writing them for my kids. Whether I'm published through an agent or whether I publish them myself is still a question I'm not really worried about. I just want to be able to say to my kids, don't give up on your dreams or your highest hopes, without sounding like the biggest hypocrite to my own burning ears. I want them to see me, I want them to emulate me, I want them to say I can do it - because she did.

So I type with one hand, while reaching for the stars with the other and I dust off that dream I shelved so very long ago...

and I write.