"What do you want to be when you grow up?"...

"I want to be a writer." the twelve year old me would respond. 

I have always had a love affair with the written word. 

I spent hours of my childhood with my nose buried in a book; I could never get enough.  I filled journal after journal with poems and stories.  I loved to document life with words. 


I like the minute details that make up our daily lives such as the many subtle shades of green that come together to create a lawn or the small lines around someones eyes that hint at a lifetime of laughter. I like details and description.  I like textures and layers.  I like emotions and the different ways in which we express them. 

I like the little things.

I'm not very good at seeing the "big picture".

I dreamt about sitting in my home office and writing the next great American romance novel... no, not the next great American novel... a romance novel because I like happy endings.  I would sit in my old wooden office chair with my sock clad feet tucked under me and my hair held back by a pencil.  I would laugh and cry as my characters made their way through the story.  I figured I would pay the bills by writing freelance pieces for magazines like Yankee and Newsweek the way my Dad did.  (In my dreams I conveniently forgot that he had a savings and retirement plan from his days with HP.)

Life has a way of changing our dreams..

I grew up in a family filled with secrets.  I loved and lost greatly when I was very young.  My dream world came crashing down in my late teens.  I no longer wrote.  If I sat down with a pen and paper it was only to write to-do lists. 

Life continues whether we are living it fully or not.

Last year I reconnected with someone who knew me before I put my pen away.  He asked me "Do you write like you always wanted to?".  I had to answer no.  I confessed that I never wrote at all.  I admitted it was because I didn't want to feel the pain that I held locked inside.  Admitting the truth, that I had pushed away my dream, was like unleashing the flood gates of a reservoir; I was overwhelmed by all the emotions I had kept hidden in my heart.  It may have been the person asking the questions or the fact that they were about my deepest dreams and desires, I'm not sure, I think it is probably the combination of past, person and time.

You can only hold back your true self, those dreams and desires of your heart, for so long before they are either lost or push to the surface.

This is where my journey started. I have good days and bad days, but now I feel those days and I write about what I am feeling, this is a huge breakthrough for me. I'll be sharing what I'm learning here in my little corner of the world wide web... my writing place...

Are your dreams gathering dust on a shelf
or are you living them out? 
I'd love to hear what you're doing please share with me in comments section