Dreaming...

I was never satisfied with one or two dreams. No, I had to go further. I thought I would like to become an author; write marvelous works like Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott. My subject of choice - however - was Science Fiction. Again, I was not all that good. Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon, at fifteen was somehow able to do that which I couldn't manage.

I suffered disappoint and frustration. But isn't it funny how life sometimes turns out for us? I'm about to get ahead of myself here...

After I left farm life, married and had two children, I struck out when I was twenty eight - with desire in one hand and tenacity in the other - to begin Junior College to major in Commercial Art. Two years later after completing only half of the needed credits, I quit. The stress of working a part time job, raising the two kids, doing homework into the late nights and excelling into the top ten percent of my class proved to be too much. I was going insane. I wasn't able to do it all.

Still, grasping my desire and tenacity tightly, I was able to land a job within the advertising department of JCPenny Outlet. The pay was less than what I made as a bookkeeper but it was (as I later found out) my first dream to come true. I had become an artist and continued to be one for the next ten years.

I worked for JCPenny Outlet for a few years until a call from an old boss to my then husband beckoned him to Florida. There I worked in an advertising agency for several months. That was the worst experience of my life. I won't go into details but from the moment I left that job, I vowed to never work in an ad agency again.

Little did I know what new door lay before me two or so years later.