Everything Girl

When I was five, I wrote a poem declaring that when I grew up I wanted to be a writer. In the intervening years (roughly thirty-five of them) between then and now, I flirted with other career choices.

Theatre was always a major draw for me, as was music, but while I enjoy participating in both, I think I always knew that acting, singing and playing my cello were destined to become beloved hobbies rather than paths to fame and fortune.

When I was eight, nine, and ten, I was obsessed with horses. My mother even gave me riding lessons at this farm in rural New Jersey where NBC used to send their horses after they’d “retired” from show business. I got to muck out stalls, learn basic riding skills, and bond with other equine-centric kids. While I was there, my favorite horses were a tiny pony named Taffy, a gorgeous lean creature named Blitzen, also a pony, though barely so, and the horse that played “Bunny” in several episodes of the Little House on the Prairie television series. Shortly after that, I spent a weekend on a ranch outside of Denver, where I rode a horse that was so big, I was walking bow-legged for a week, and that killed my dreams of ever being a jockey, which is too bad, because it’s one sport where being short is an advantage.

The next year, I decided marine biology would be my field. My friend Jill and I had a great spring and summer splashing through the creek that ran through the park across the street from our Arvada, CO, condo complex, or just hanging out on the sandy bank, under a canopy of trees. Thinking back on that time now, I think it was one of the last truly innocent summers of the twentieth century. It was definitely near the end of unwired wildness. As long as we were home by dinner time, no one expected us to call in every hour, and our hours went largely untracked and unsupervised.

Cut to this December, when I find myself waxing nostalgic for my youth, partly because my 40th birthday is getting awfully close (August 17, 2010 - make a note. I like chocolate, flowers, bubble bath and books), and partly because my most lucrative writing gig has gone away. When you’re a kid, or even a twenty-something young adult, being essentially rudderless is kind of cool. When you’re an adult, with responsibilities and mortgage payments and such…not so much. It makes you want to cover all the mirrors so your own image won’t mock you from within, and makes curling up in bed and crying for your mother that much more tempting.

Robert Frost wrote about taking the road less traveled, and Lewis Carroll wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” I wish I could launch this bright, new, year by announcing that I’ve got some internal road map, some master plan to guarantee that I’ll be successful by the time I actually do hit forty, but the scary truth is that I don’t. I never did.

As a little girl, one of my favorite things to do whenever we moved to a new neighborhood was to climb on my bike, get myself as lost as possible, and then figure out how to get back home. Sometimes it took minutes, and sometimes it took hours, but my inner compass always got me where I needed to be. This morning, I looked at my reflection in the mirror, and my little-girl self gazed back at me. “It was never about getting lost,” she seemed to say. “It was always about the ride.” Suddenly, I understood exactly what is meant when people say, “It’s about the journey.” Destinations are great, but if you miss all the scenery along the way, what does it matter how fast you got there?

So, I’m thirty-nine. I have a great husband, a house I love, three adorable dogs, amazing friends, a supportive family, and a novel that isn’t quite ready to be published (soon, though, soon). But you know what? I must have a prescient moment when I was five.

Because even if I don’t know for sure what I’m doing with my life…I am a writer.

And road maps are overrated, anyway.

Melissa A. Bartell likes strong coffee, red wine, and dark chocolate. She earns her living writing web-copy for an Internet marketing firm & dabbles in fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Managing Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page, check out her blog at MissMeliss.com, or follow her on Twitter: @Melysse

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