This blog has nothing to do with losing weight.

This blog has nothing to do with losing weight. I just watched Julie/Julia which is a movie that is about.....food. Food...when I am trying to lose weight, ha ha! The movie really inspired me. The "Julie" of the child is a woman who was bored and underwhelmed (is that a word?) in her life and decides to cook her way through the 524 recipes in Julia Child's cookbook. She blogs about her experiences over a year and gets more and more fans and eventually is asked to publish a book. Needless to say....that book became a movie. What triggered this idea was the fact that Julie was turning 30.
I am 27 ...will be 28 in just a few months. I am happily married and the lucky mother of a beautiful 16 month old girl. I am proud of what I have accomplished. But...

But...I recently was invited to my high school 10 year reunion! 10 YEARS! Where did the time go? YIKES! I can't help thinking, "Have I done everything I imagined doing in ten years?" the answer is a big fat "NO!" But who has, really? Does anybody ever say I have accomplished everything I dreamed, exactly the way I planned, and in the time I imagined it would take? NO.

First, let me say that I have always wanted to be married and be a mom. I LOVE being a mom. It is the most wonderful and indescribable feeling in the world. Being a mom has made me think in different ways than I used to think. When my daughter gets a little older and grabs my hand and looks me in the eye and in her sweet little voice proudly proclaims "Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a ....(dancer) (writer)(scientist)(engineer)(doctor)(The President of the United States of America) I want to be able to kneel down to her level, look her in the eye and as I tuck some of her unruly hair behind an ear (which looks just like her daddy's) say "Butterfly, you can be anything you want to be!" but I want to say so much more, "You can be anything as long as you try..."

I want to be a writer. I always have. I don't know if I am any good. But I love to write. More than that, I love the way a book can take you away, can get you lost and then can bring you back again to reality when you close it. A book sits there, on a shelf, on a table, and promises you a release. Promises you a vacation, if only for a few minutes. I want to be able to do that for someone.

I am writing a book. The first one I have ever attempted. I have written over 100 pages! I am not sure if its any good or not. I don't know if I will ever do anything with it, if I will ever try to get it published. All I know is that I love writing it, and I will finish it. Someday, when my daughter is feeling discouraged about life, as we all do at some point, I want to be able to hand my book to her, jammed into a dusty 3 holed binder, and say to her "Honey, one day I decided to write a book. It was my dream in life, and though it took me 27 years to even have the courage to type the first word. I did it, and I finished it. I never truly believed I could do it. There were probably a lot of other people who never believed I could do it. But I did." and I am hoping she will take the binder, wipe the dust off the cover, flip through the pages and smell the old paper (I love that smell) and then she will read it. Read every page. When she is done, even if it was horrible and she is relieved I never tried to publish it, I hope that she takes a message from it. I hope she sees that her mother set out to do something that I always wanted to do and I did it. I simply...did it. I hope that when she sets out to do something, she will go beyond just doing it. She will push it to its limits and try and try again. She will look failure in the eye bravely and continue on. And if she finds that her goals change, she will attack her new goals just as strongly as the one before.

So I will finish my book. If for no other reason than to show my daughter I can. To show her that anyone can do anything that they set their mind to....if they only try.

It is New Year's Eve. 10:13pm. 2009 will end in less than 2 hours and 2010 will begin. I will not be celebrating the new year by partying or getting drunk. I will be spending it working on my writing. So Happy New Year everyone (re:Sarah, who is probably the only person who reads my blog....possibly Nathalie, too) and here is to setting goals and setting examples.


Happy New Year!