Goals Unfulfilled -RemembeRED –

I knew what I wanted…I knew when I was six..I want to write. Really write. I want to be able to call myself a bona fide writer, and not feel like a complete fraud because it’s not “official”. Sure, I’ve been paid to write here and there, but it’s nothing that will make up a career. That’s what I want.

I’ve set goals, I’ve read books, I’ve got a “dream board” I stare at every day with positive affirmations and things that will help me reach those goals…reach that place in my life where that empty place in my heart sits to fill it up.

I think there must be a leak some place because over and over goals I’ve made have dripped away, evaporating into lost time.  My art teacher in elementary school, Mrs. Knowles used to say, “Time wasted can not be regained.” I can’t remember any piece of art I did back then, but she left an impression on my child-self I’m truly grateful for.

I wonder what the child me would think about the grown up person I’ve become. I think she’d be proud, but she’d wonder why I feel so scared.

“How can you be scared of doing something that makes you happy?” She’d ask, her freckled nose wrinkling up at me.

I’d shrug my shoulders at her and give her one of my well-worn excuses. Excuses are hollow empty things, yet there they are filling up all that lost time.

She’d smile her goofy-gapped tooth grin and say, “Silly, don’t you know what to do when you feel scared?”

I’d shake my head at her.

She’d roll her eyes because the answer was so simple.  “You just close your eyes and think-up good things.” Her eyes would go all soft and dreamy then. “Things like princesses, that ride on unicorns and get to eat cake and ice cream for breakfast. That’s what I do when I’m scared. I make up imaginary worlds where cool things happen.”

Duh.

When did I become so lame?

It happened when I thought about how super-awesome-amazing it would be to be that kid who’d make up stories, who turned into a grown-up who wrote stories people would read, where they’d be transported to a super-awesome-really-cool place where they’d forget themselves…and their fears, or the crappy grade they’d got on their Algebra test because of words on a page that were written by me.

 .....This post was inspired by this week's writing prompt from  Write On Edge -RemembeRED – Unfulfilled