When I was in third grade, I thought I was going to be a writer. I thought that all the way through school, all the way through the bit of college I took, and partway through my life as a mother. It's during that mother part that the dream fizzled. So here I am, writing a diary on a free web site. Damn, I'm good.

I had a Creative Writing teacher in high school that told the class, "Some people write for others, and some write for themselves." I remember thinking I would be one of the ones writing for others. I always wrote for others. I had already been keeping a journal for a couple years, which I wrote as if people were actually going to pick it up one day and find it interesting. I didn't even find that thing interesting after a year or so. And it's that that made me start thinking sharing my writing probably wasn't such a good idea. So I changed to someone who writes for herself. Until now.

I could sit here and analyze why I'm doing this all day, or night. It's really not going to do anyone any favors, including me. I always feel the need to justify myself.

Which brings me back to where I started. Why did I quit thinking of myself as a writer? I suppose I never thought of myself as a real writer. I won a contest in the third grade for a story I wrote. That's where the dream began. I won second place in a poetry contest as a senior in high school. I was editor of the school literary magazine. I wrote a journal. That's about as writerly as I got. I never considered writing as a real career. I went through high school as a business major, started college as a business major and changed to an interior design major. I became a mother and wife, dropped out of school, got divorced, got married again and became a mother for the second time. The closest I came to thinking of myself as a writer was when I bought a publishing guide and started a few stories. That was ten years ago.

I'm not here to establish myself. I'm just here to pretend I'm a writer without putting forth the effort. If I keep at it, I might figure out what I really am.