So I’m on the couch, looking for an online magazine to submit a short story I wrote. I love my story. Let’s see if anyone out there loves it. It’s about being quirky, and different, and loved. Which, now that I think about it, is the theme of everything I write.

I’ve got a million ideas for stories. If only I knew how to carry them out, I would be a fantastically wealthy writer and a more interesting person, the kind of person who I thought I would grow up to be when I was young and writing about being young. I never could have predicted my life wouldn’t go as planned. Most people knew this truth early on, but not me. My mother used recipes; my father was a probate lawyer. Things were planned in advance.

I had a huge head start in life. Still, I wish I had a cool story about growing up on L.A., like some people I’ve met, but I wasn’t cool enough to know them back in the day. I’m talking about the kids who grew up in Laurel Canyon, listened to Motley Crue when they were 10, and had parents who were never home. I had every Beatles record, but I was tucked away safely in the suburbs, nowhere near the Sunset Strip. I ended up finding it anyway. It couldn’t be helped, it was the 80’s.

I wanted to write, and live like a writer, in one canyon or another around L.A. Maybe I would even marry a man with an English accent, who would no doubt be an artist or a musician of some kind. And The Beatles would play all day long, I would name my daughter Rhiannon, and eat chocolate icing out of the container with a spoon, because I would be an adult and I could do anything I want. Including wearing ripped jeans and going barefoot. My idea of being an adult was acting like a kid. Who wants to grow up and be responsible for anything? Not I, said the fly.

I don’t know what the hell happened, but I didn’t become the deep thinking esteemed award winning writer that I thought I was destined to be. I’d like to talk to the person who ended up becoming what they dreamed about when they were young. It would have to be an astronaut, or a rock star, or maybe a lion tamer. Or I’m thinking of Rocky, my favorite underdog from my favorite movie. People really do follow their dreams (I’m telling myself). I think I’ll spend the rest of the day submitting my story.