Geek the Girl

I was going to write about our continuing adventures at swim class today, but that can wait for another couple days, because I need to tell you the following:

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOWZA!

And also: SQUEE!

I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I have known how to write, I think. I don't know when I started wanting to be a writer, but I know I haven't ever stopped. All those plans that I have made for the day when I eventually win eleventy bajillion dollars in the lottery? Most of them revolve, in some way, around me basically being able to sit somewhere quiet (with all the necessary distractions, like television and internet and rum and pedicures) and just be a writer for the rest of my life, because that is what I really want to be when I grow up.

Look: I remember reading books when I was very wee, making up my own stories to go along with the pictures that I already knew so well -- that was a kind of writing, in a way. I used to have many terribly exciting adventures with my once-and-future imaginary friend, Elizabeth Tony, effectively scripting my way through many days of my childhood. I was writing poems in the fourth grade for my teacher, Sr. Patrick, to deliver to another nun at her convent who was ill. I kept journals upon journals, some of which I still have, filled with sonnets and scribbles and angst in prose form. I wrote essays and short plays and screenplays and dozens if not hundreds of papers in college, some academic, some philosophical, some just outpourings of emotion. I've been kicking around no fewer than three different novels for the past fifteen years, starting and stopping and scrapping and scrubbing and storing the details in different files over approximately eight different computers. I have a blog. I am, is, are, was, were, and have always been a writer.

And now, finally and kind of accidentally, I am a published writer. Not self-published, either, but actually commissioned. Someone read my stuff, liked it, and dedicated space somewhere for me to be read by other people, people who are not necessarily related to me and therefore not obliged in any way to read me if they don't want to.

It's kind of really awesome.

So, yes, anyway: effective yesterday, I have a new "side gig," as a Lifestyle Contributor on 40MomsClub. Probably it's a bit tacky for me to keep going on about this, but this is kind of a dream come true, and I want to relish the moment for a little bit. This is for real, you guys. I have an official bio on the website and everything. I'll be doing a few columns every month, stuff that you won't see here, that I will be writing specifically for 40MomsClub because somebody asked me if I would. I will be in good company, I think -- the site is growing and already they have three great regular contributors, plus the founder, plus ... well, me. (I am mostly there for comic relief, but still.)

I'll link to new stories when they go live, either here or in my Twitter feed, or you can push the fancy new button I put over in my sidebar to go right to the site homepage. Poke around over there, say hi.

And then, if you'll excuse me: now is the time on Sprockets when we do the dance of joy.