What are your dreams and ambitions?

 What are your dreams and ambitions? Is there one dream that seems to persist after others have come and gone? What are you doing about it? My dream, from as long as I can remember, was to be a writer. In elementary school the teachers had me read my compositions to the class, in high school I would have loved to write for the school paper but was afraid to try. When I had my handwriting analyzed about 20 years ago it said I should go into the literary field; my horoscope says people in my sign make good writers; and besides, I’ve always just loved to write. Over the years anyone who got a letter from me was in for a long reading session—16 pages was about the norm and people always told me my letters made them feel like I was right there talking to them. As a mother with young children I gave myself the excuse that I had no time to do any serious writing, and besides, how did I know if I’d be any good at it? Then the children started growing up and I took a part time job—where? in a newspaper office naturally! And I loved it, even though all I did was type other people's copy. It was exciting to me just to be there.

Because I worked for a newspaper, the volunteer organizations I joined took it for granted I could write and automatically made me their publicity chairman, but I didn't look at any of that as really writing. Then the other day I read a quotation about how to know when you're getting old. One of the ways was “if you have no more dreams and ambitions” and I said to myself “I guess I’m not really getting old—I still have my dream. Someday I’m going to write.” And myself answered back, “Oh, yeah? When? You can go to your grave with a dream if you never do anything about it!” How many times did I wake up at night and do a whole story in my head, only to forget it when I woke up in the morning? Today I woke up at 5 a.m. with the idea to do a column (in fact five or six columns presented themselves right then and there) and instead of going back to sleep, which I couldn't seem to do anyway, I got up and started writing. I had always admired personal columnists like Erma Bombeck and Judith Viorst (and Miriam Schlicht's “On the Other Hand” and Sharon Yoder’s “Cup of Tea” and decided this morning that this was the day I was going to do something about my dream. What you’re reading now is my first step. Where it will lead I have no idea. I may fall flat on my face or I may become syndicated (ha, ha, but why not go the limit when you're dreaming?) And now that I took my first baby step, how about you? What are your dreams and ambitions? What are you doing about them? THINK ABOUT IT!!! -

Published date?- my guess would be somewhere between 1974 and 1979