Jaded.

When I was in second grade, my teacher told my parents she thought I had problems paying attention and behaving myself in class. Her diagnosis at the time (before the ADHD epidemic and kids were just recognized as having naturally short attention spans) was that I was advanced for my age (true) and that I was bored with the lessons that I either already knew, or picked up quickly (very true).

Her solution was to find things to occupy me. And so, my parents took me to the local K-Mart, where I picked out a fine collection of crossword puzzles, word searches, and a Lisa Frank notebook with brightly colored unicorns on the cover. After that, whenever I got bored in class (which was often), I’d pull out the Lisa Frank notebook and I’d write stories.

It wasn’t so much that I was an obnoxiously precocious child; I guess I have always just been a writer at heart. I go through the mundane existence of my days narrating inside my head, writing my life out to be a much more exciting story than it is, filling it with exciting adjectives and observations. I’ve always sat on the outskirts of my own existence, of every party and every experience, observing and writing in my head, filling the Lisa Frank notebook with comical, insightful descriptions of everything around me. I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. Second grade was just the first time I had a notebook at my disposal.

I guess, simply put, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Sometimes people just know in their hearts what they’re supposed to do -- their destinies, if you want to be romantic about it – and this has always been what I’ve felt destined for. Unfortunately, when you’re eight years old you overlook such details as finding a job, or paying the mortgage or the vague possibility that life can (and will) take twists and turns you don’t intend or foresee.

The dream of writing never left me, even through the disillusionment of college and the natural jading of life. But now as an adult, I try to write on my laptop (admittedly not as snazzy as the Lisa Frank notebook, albeit more convenient), I stare at the blank screen and wonder if I was ever as good as I thought, or if all I am is potential and reputation. If my reputation is even real. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it isn’t even good. I don’t know.

All I have ever wanted to do with my life is write. And now, after a few detours in life I hadn’t necessarily foreseen, I sit with a husband whom I adore, a beautiful daughter, and an empty laptop screen.

When does the crippling self-doubt and self-consciousness of adulthood sink in and spoil the dreams of our youth? Instead of penning stories with the feverish passion I used to, I sit and doubt myself. I doubt anyone would read anything I have to say. I can’t even find anyone who’d want to read it, besides my mom (who has been known to throw my journalism clips away) and my husband (because I’m standing over his shoulder).

The eight-year-old kid who used to sit against the wall at recess, scribbling stories while the other kids played (which became a common theme up through college, and sort of cramped my social life) screams at me sometimes, Why am I making it so hard? You don’t understand, I reason with her. There’s nothing to say, nothing to write, and even if I did write something, I doubt it’d be good. I shake my head solemnly at her, sighing, You’re not as talented as the teachers tell your parents. Ignore those silly dreams and go into accounting. They have really great job security these days.

But still the laptop screen sits open, waiting to be filled with the observations and narrations that sound so great in my head but look so cheesy and trite and pretentious in black and white. Even as I write this, I keep thinking how pretentious it must all sound. I apologize.

Maybe someday it’ll all make sense to me. But in the meantime, I sit at my laptop, and I write. And I delete. And I write some more. Then I delete and I go chase after my daughter, since I’m apparently in charge of raising her when I’m not furiously typing and deleting. The dreams get put on hold while I fish whatever small random object is surely minutes away from choking her to death, and they fade away for awhile as I read her Thomas the Tank Engine for the umpteenth bajillionth time. That’s life, I suppose. That’s my life, at least.

And then I come back to the empty screen, and it all starts over again.