A monumental day

I can't help but sometimes reflect on my life and marvel at my journey to where I am today. This month is my birthday, a date that, at this point, I don't do much celebrating. Once you hit middle age, birthdays aren't a big deal anymore. I joke that I'm at that age where when I state said age it's with an upward inflection as if I'm not quite sure. Over 20 years ago, when I was about to leave for Basic Military Training, I was angry and disappointed.

I had wanted to go to college and study writing. Other kids in my grade level had received all these packets from schools they had inquired about and were going on trips with their parents to visit the schools and decide if that was their next step or not. That was not my experience. My parents didn't talk to me about college until I presented them with information on a university I had found that I wanted to try to go to to study creative writing. Put simply, my mother said, "No. You aren't going to college, and you aren't going to study writing. You are going into the military and will go to school while you are in for something you can actually get paid to do." And that was that. I didn't even have a choice on which branch of service. My parents had been in the Air Force, so I was going to join the Air Force.

Looking back, I wasn't particularly upset that I was going into the military. In a way, I was glad in the end as I waited for the bus to come pick me up to head to Texas because it meant I could get away from my parents. I was mad because, without reading anything I had written at the time (of which I had written a lot), my mother assumed I lacked talent.

There's no way of knowing for sure, but I believe my mom just wanted me out of the way and possibly felt like I was a bit of a disappointment compared to my older brother, who was, and I imagine still is a certifiable genius.

I loved writing as soon as I knew how to put pen to paper. I preferred to write fiction and fantasy short stories, and I dabbled a bit with poetry. I had notebooks full of original works and even dreamed of writing screenplays. It's funny how quick we can be to give up on something we love if certain people tell us it's outside the bounds of our abilities.

During the 20 years that I served in uniform, I only wrote for work. For two decades, I didn't bother to try to do any creative writing. I had been convinced that was not the life I was meant for because I lacked the skill.

My brother, on the other hand, was always encouraged by our mom to write. She would send him fancy notebooks with heartfelt messages on the inside cover, telling him how talented he was with words and challenging him to write something that would get published in the newspaper or elsewhere. What's funny is my brother had no interest in writing, at least as far as I ever knew.

It wouldn't be until after I retired that I'd write again, this time for myself. I started my own blog to work out my political voice. I had and still do have aspirations for public office, and since the military has pretty strict rules against expressing one's opinions, I wanted to make sure I worked on crafting mine in an eloquent yet relatable manner.

At its height, my blog had maybe 40 subscribers, most of whom were friends from the service. However, the blog caught the eye of an old friend from my early days in the service. That friend just so happened to work at a digital news outlet, and that's how I essentially fell into becoming a political commentator.

All of a sudden, I went from a small 40-person or so subscription blog to having thousands of readers and followers. It was thrilling, and to this day, I miss it a bit. I was even on the radio a few times, which was probably my favorite part of the job, discussing my pieces and current events on the radio with other like-minded and not-so-like-minded people.

Just as my mother had squashed my belief in myself, my editor - who, mind you, I've never physically met - was the one to spark that belief again. He pushed me to write a book on my experiences in the military, specifically my time in Afghanistan. I toyed around with this idea but lost steam after a while. My experiences in Afghanistan were typical - depressing, sad, and frustrating - hard to get too excited for that theme. Perhaps my military story will be told, but I'll leave those books to the retired Generals and Special Forces bubbas for now.

Instead of typing out my military memoir, I decided that what really excited me was some of the side projects I had tinkered with since writing again. I had written a short little horror piece that can be found on my website under the Fiction blog and a fantasy story that my husband and I had kicked around while drinking beers at one of our favorite breweries.

Then, my mother swooped in and knocked me clear off my path. I'm not sure if she did that on purpose or if it was just a byproduct of her nature, but when she moved in with us, my writing came to a standstill. I wasn't just not writing for pleasure; I couldn't even keep up with my political commentary.

However, thanks to my husband and I, truly believe, divine intervention, I was able to free myself and my family from my parents. It took some time, but once we got settled into our new home and free of my toxic, abusive family, I decided I was going to commit to writing a book.

So I sat down and wrote my dream statement at the top of a page in my personal notebook: "I want to be an author of books."

I had my dream statement down; I had to figure out what came next. Taking a page out of Mark Wahlberg's book (if you haven't watched Wahl Street, I highly recommend it; it's incredibly inspiring), I needed to create a plan.

With pencil in hand, I wrote out my plan to finish my first book. I figured out when I wanted to complete my first draft, the steps that would need to happen simultaneously and after, and even how many words a day I needed to write to reach my goal.

Next, it was time to hustle, and I have been hustling. I started my fiction book on October 1st, and today (right on time), I passed my halfway point with over 40,000 words down on paper! The 18-year-old me believed that I wasn't talented enough, smart enough, or driven enough to become a writer. Today, not only am I a published and syndicated political commentator, but I am well on my way to finishing the first draft of my first book.

I'm glad my life has had so many twists and turns, and I hope there are more wonderful surprise destinations in my future. Here's to another 40,000 words, hustling for the dreams and proving the naysayers wrong.