Oh Yeah, Remember?

With all this running and pound-losing and preparing for a half-marathon and talking about running and pound-losing, it's easy to believe that that's all this blog is about. But it's about so much more.

It's about digging out those forever-dreams that I buried long ago in the detritus of survival. Forever, because most of my dreams/goals have been a part of me since I was young:

Entrepreneurial - I was mowing lawns for money at 12 and dreaming up other businesses with each pass of the mower. Heck, when I was 9 or 10, my sister and I put together magic shows in our basement, charging admission and selling popcorn and lemonade for a little spending money.

Writing - I've been writing stories since my 4th grade teacher told me I had a gift for the written word (pardon the cliche, but she really did!). I have three finished novels collecting dust on my back burner. And when I ruminate on one or the other, I get excited about their stories and characters all over again. They may not be publisher-worthy quite yet, but each one has potential...to touch lives, move emotions in some way, thrill a reader.

Every time I see a hawk sitting on a pole or streaking through the trees of the neighborhood chasing sparrows, I remember how alive I felt when I was a falconer. It's been six years since I flew a hawk, but when I see one, I think, I could do that now...I'm healthy enough to keep up with a goshawk! (Well, relatively speaking - I'm healthy enough to handle the long jaunts through knee-deep snow to recover a goshawk plucking a pheasant a mile from where she first left my fist.) Or follow a crazy squirrel chase through the woods with a fierce and determined Redtailed hawk.

And my newest one, which is really a return to the days when I was a big fan of Backwoods Home magazine, but actually makes even more sense in this crazy world we live in today, becoming more self-relient. I want to grow my own food - vegetables, herbs, fruit, maybe even eggs - and can it, and brew my own beer, and hunt my own meat (another long-held dream - arrowing a deer).

These dreams are all a part of living, living my life, which is what this blog is all about: truly living, not just surviving. Ignoring the naysayer at the back of my mind telling me I'll fail, or it's not good enough, or it's not worth the trouble, and doing something because it's what I was born to do. And because putting off everything until "one of these days" may just take too long.

I need to remember that.

Do you have dreams that are in the "One Of These Days" files? When are you going to get them out of the file and start doing them?