Finally Going For Your Dreams

How a small decision to go to a writing conference could possibly change the course of it all.

Me in my home office, surrounded by cats!

Fifteen years ago, I stood at the basement of a bookstore with 18 miles of books in the self-help aisle. I stared at all of the books with tiny print in the spines and saw my future.

“You could do this,” I said, “look at all these people who were published.”

If every single one of these people wrote a book and now it’s here, in paperback and hardcover, at The Strand in New York City, why not me? That dream never left me, but year after year, it was impossible. What would I write about? Where would I start? So I didn’t do anything about it. The gap, instead, filled with other ambitions that would come and go.  

I don’t know what changed.  The move from Colorado to Oregon, the fog and the mist?  The initiatory world of Eugene, Oregon where moss grows on parking lot walls and rivers flow through the city?  The decision last September to get an office and have a dedicated space outside of the home?  The morning pages and the practice of having this Substack?