I have a wonderfully uneasy feeling this afternoon.

I've always been fiercely independent. It's a product of the confidence my parents instilled in me and the fact that we moved every year of my life until I was in the 6th grade. It's always been very easy for me to make have-fun friends. I am fascinated by people. I love to talk. I love to have fun. I have an adventurous spirit. I'm a low-maintenance person. I don't need to be coddled, and I don't need an ego-boost. I don't care if you don't invite me somewhere that you invite another friend. I don't care if you don't call me every day or even every week. It's pretty easy to be my hang-out friend.

However, this journey has taught me a little about myself. I don't let very many people in. I mean really in. I am fairly outspoken, and it's not hard to find out where I stand on most things or to find out what I what I like and don't like. I'm also a control freak, though, and I don't like it when I'm vulnerable. I don't really take risks in my relationships. I have a ton of hang-out friends, but very few really close friends. My husband is the only person I've ever really allowed to see just how wacked I really am, except for a dude I paid a hundred dollars an hour to give me an objective opinion of my noggin. I even cut that off before I really opened up.

It's always been really easy for me to cut people out of my life. I guess it was a defense mechanism I set up as a child. Just as I started to feel comfortable somewhere or with some people, I had to start all over. In the long run, this benefited me in a lot of ways, but it also hurt me. I often wonder what happened to people I once considered friends but never enough to really care.

Imagine my surprise then when I started to realize I actually need people. More to the point, I actually need friends. Since I traded in my TV career for mommyhood, I have done very little "hanging out," which is something I did a lot of in my old life. I mean a lot. We were always hanging out with a large group of people. We were usually drinking and always laughing. We had so much fun that it became hard to distinguish one fun night from the others. It was just a constant party. The funny thing about partying, though, is that it's hard to share your true self over the music and the booze. Depending on who you really are, that could either be a good thing or a bad thing.

So lately, I've been trying to spend quality time with people I like. I have very little free time these days, so when I'm hanging out with someone, I try to make the most of it. Over the past month, I've spent some valuable time with a couple of good friends, and I'm starting to realize just how important that is to me. These are strong, intelligent, and caring women who make the world a better place because they're in it. More personally, I know they enrich my life by being a part of it. I hope I can learn to be the kind of friend they are to me. It's a lesson I should have learned in Brownies in the first grade, but better late than never, right?

OK, so it's a beautiful fall day, and I'm tired of being Debbie Downer. I'll stop obsessing about all the horrible things that could happen in life and try to focus on something positive. For example, my superior spending skills.

Now, some kids may have all the latest, coolest, most rad toys on the market. Fisher Price pays people a lot of money to come up with new stuff to make kids smile. My Little Sunshine has a few of those, too, although we didn't buy 99 percent of it. That's the beauty of being the first couple on both sides to procreate. The first grandchild gets a lot of loot. A lot.

Anyhoo, I grew up a poor kid, and even though we have a decent standard of living now, I tend to spend money like a person who doesn't know where her next meal is coming from. I've been called a Tight Wad before, and I don't have a problem with that label. I take it as a compliment. As most Americans live way beyond their means and dig themselves deeper in debt, my husband and I are trying to save our way to early retirement. Neither of us ever wants to work for The Man again. He's a real jerk.

I love My Little Sunshine for a million reasons, but I especially love him when he makes me seem smart (most of the time he makes me feel really, really stupid, so feeling smart is good). One day I bought him a package of wooden spoons at the dollar store to "cook" with while I was making dinner. Sunshine seriously needs something to do every second of every day, and I'm glad to oblige, especially when the solution is this simple. These spoons cost me approximately 33 cents a piece, but they've paid for themselves a million times over.

Today, those wooden spoons were a bagillion things by lunchtime. They were drumsticks, flags, golf clubs, bats, oh, and spoons, of course. I used to get ticked every morning when he would dump them out on the floor within 10 minutes of getting out of bed. Now I smile. He has gotten so much joy out of those wooden spoons that I don't really care what he does with them. They have been an amazing tool for him to develop his little imagination. It's so cool to see what he comes up with. When he walked over today and said, "Mommy, wanna play golf clubs?" I nearly cried. Sure Mommy will play golf clubs, dude, and whatever else you want. You are too cool for words. He didn't need anything with flashing lights or obnoxious sounds or batteries or assembly required. He just needed some wooden spoons and a brain. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Fisher Price.

So I know I ranted yesterday about the crap that is on television right now, but there actually are some decent dramas on in prime time this season. Problem is I can't watch some of them anymore. Some of them disturb me so badly that I can't function. I used to be a hard ass, but I think becoming a mother changes the chemical makeup of your brain. In the old days, I would go years without shedding a tear. Years. Now, it's not unusual for me to cry every week. Every day sometime. I can't see anything about children being hurt without losing my ever-loving mind.

Last night, Criminal Minds nearly sent me to the psych ward. It was about a little boy who was kidnapped at the age of one and held captive by a pedophile until he was 7. That's when his captor decided to auction the little boy off to another deviant criminal. I know this is a fictional story, but stuff like this really happens. Last week, cops in my state arrested a man who had kidnapped a girl, raped her and kept her in an underground bunker. Imagine the terror this real little girl felt. Imagine the terror she's going to feel for the rest of her life. Imagine the terror her family felt when she was missing and even after they found her.

My Little Sunshine is my life. Sometimes I cry because I feel so lucky to have him. Sometimes I cry because he amazes me with the kindness, intelligence and humor he's already developed. I have so much hope for his life. I look forward to watching him grow up and become a man with a career and a family of his own. If anything ever happened to him, I couldn't handle it.

Sometimes when I look at all the evil in this world, I wonder why we ever decided to have kids in the first place. It's a very scary world out there, and I brought a child into this casino of life. I've rolled the dice and prayed that they come out lucky. You just never know. I know we took this gamble of life with faith that diligence and good luck would make everything OK. I know we will do everything we can to keep him safe and happy and healthy, but some days the fear is paralyzing. It makes me want to put My Little Sunshine in a bubble. That's what my heart tells me. My head, however, usually prevails. I know that if I tried to protect him from every danger in the universe that he would miss out on some of life's greatest joys, and I would never want to rob him of that. Maybe I'll just wrap him in bubble wrap. Yeah. That's the ticket.

It's amazing that someone who made her living by working in television for 14 years can suddenly despise the medium. TV is crap. Period. I have hundreds and hundreds of television stations, and I needed some mindless stimulation while I ate my lunch. I turned on the tube, and searched and searched for Court TV, which is one of the only stations I watch anymore. It's decent reality television, and it shows the American justice system at work, flaws and all. I flipped through the entire guide four times, but no Court TV. What the hell? I watched it yesterday. I'm personally invested in the quadruple murder trial of a Georgia businessman. I need to know if his money buys him freedom. Is Court TV fighting with Direct TV? It's certainly happened before.

Anyway, I just wanted to find something to watch while I ate. Amazingly, out the 700 or so channels I have, the only thing that sounded remotely entertaining was MTV's Little Talent Show. I just wasted 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Talk about crap. People who don't deserve 15 seconds of fame got way more than 15 minutes. I think I threw up in my mouth a little. Do we as Americans so love to watch people humiliate themselves that people will put up money to produce this crap?

It's not only reality TV that is crap. The mindless drivel is also taking over my beloved television news. Nothing is sacred from consultants and "market researchers." They have taken all that is good about journalism and thrown it out the window in order to make room for complete crap. One thing that drives me crazy is this "More to the Story" stuff. It's mindless drivel to give the producers something to do and anchors something to say. It's never more about the story you were actually watching. It's a bunch of pointless facts that have some remote connection to the topic at hand. Most of the time, it's lame "Don't Drink the Drano" crap that's a complete waste of my time. For example, there was a story about a motorcycle death the other night. The "More to the Story" was that 90 percent of motorcycle deaths are men. Well, that's not hard to figure out, considering 90 percent of the people who ride motorcycles are men. Instead of giving me another story that would tell me what's going on in the world, I got crap. I had to turn off the television.

It makes me want to donate my televisions to charity. I won't do it, because I'm a Grey's Anatomy and Dancing with the Stars (I swear I graduated from college and even got into grad school) junkie. Some people would argue that's also crap, but at least I find it entertaining. Does it enrich my life? Probably not, but it helps me put off more things that I really need to be doing.

It just feels good to be alive today. Late September in South Carolina is beautiful. The air smells crisp and there's a slight breeze, but the sun is still warm on your skin. I felt like a lizard on a log as I was driving this morning. The windows were down, the volume on my CD player was up, and my spirit was soaring. I don't know why really, but I'll take this feeling whenever I can get it.

My Little Sunshine walked straight out the door this morning, lunchbox in hand. He's only been going to "school" for a few weeks now, but he's already turning into such a big boy. It happens so fast it's making my head spin. On our drive, we sang and car-danced along with the "diggy-diggy" (bluegrass) music. I can't stop smiling when I see how much music already touches my son's soul. It's a beautiful thing to witness, and I hope that we can share a lifetime of joy in music. I do wish, however, that he would inherit his father's musical abilities, because I have absolutely none. It's sad that I cannot create something that makes me so happy, but I am so moved by what comes out of other people's hearts and minds.

Also on our drive to school, the sky took my breath away. It honestly looked like a piece of religious artwork in which the sun's rays are shooting through the clouds in straight lines, opening up the heavens for the angels. I'm not a religious person, but I can't help but marvel at the world sometimes. Hats off to whomever or whatever created such a beautiful place. You get a big thumbs up in my book. The sight of the sky made me even happier to be alive. I have a childlike fear of death, and I actually thought out loud as I looked up that today would be a terrible day to die. It's one of those days that makes you want to live to be a thousand.

My Little Sunshine walked straight into school without crying and without saying goodbye to his mommy. That hurt a little, but it made me so happy that he's finally relaxing enough to have fun with kids his own age. It's heart-wrenching to leave your baby when you know that he's miserable and confused and, frankly, mad at you. It was nice to walk out of that building smiling for once. I knew that I was about to have a couple carefree hours to myself. I could focus on myself for a bit without being weighted down by the crushing Mommy Guilt that often rules my life.

I got my blood pumping at Jazzercise, where I found another woman who inspires me. She weighs at least a hundred pounds more than me, and she was kicking my butt today. I was nearly passing out several times, and she just kept right on trucking. She even noticed that I was huffing and puffing an awful lot for a skinnier person, and she tried to pep me up. It's nice to hear kind words from a stranger, and it's nice to find inspiration in other women. If I could have caught my breath before class was over, I would have thanked her for the encouragement. I'll plan to do that next week. That class set me up for a day full of energy. It's amazing how good you feel when you get up off your butt and move a little. This feeling is going to carry me through the day.

I smell horrible, I need to mop my kitchen floor, and I have four piles of clean but unfolded laundry on my couch. I don't care, though. I feel good. Some days I get so bogged down in the mundane details of existing: all the crap I have to do that I just don't want to. It feels some times like it's going to crush me. Today, however, the have-tos are manageable. Hopefully, I can squeeze in a couple of want-tos as well. Have a beautiful day. I will.

I've been known to climb up onto a very lofty soapbox every now and then and spew rants, insults, or wisdom to the masses gathered below. I am very patient, but when I get fired up, I get fired up. Now is one of those times. I just hung up the phone with a customer service person. She was actually American, so her silence on the other end of the line was not due to a language barrier. It was due to her utter incompetence.

I don't get how service companies schedule appointments to begin with. I've had numerous appointments over the years that are huge blocks of time. For example, today's appointment was anywhere from 8am to noon. It is now 12:45pm, and I still don't have my DirecTV DVR, and I have no freaking clue where my DVR is, or where my DVR installer is.

At 12:20, I called 1-800-DirecTV. Of course, I get an automated response. Instead of asking me to press a number, the computer asked me, "How can I assist you?" Totally thrown off guard and befuddled, I said, "Um, uh, yeah, um, I had, uh, an appointment this morning for, um, an installation, and, uh, no one has, um, showed up." I can't believe a computer is recording me to be played back to someone who will listen to my recording, answer my call, and then ask me to repeat the problem. Well, after processing my statement, the computer decided I needed to be transferred to technical support, which sounded wrong, but I couldn't tell the computer that.

While I was on hold for five minutes, the computer informed me that if I wanted to pay my bill or purchase a pay-per-view program, I need not wait! Of course! Why would you make a person wait to give you money! We need that dime now! It doesn't matter I suppose that I pay my bills on time every month and have been doing so for several years. If a deadbeat who hasn't paid you in months needs assistance finally coughing up what he owes, no sweat. Wait no more.

Finally, a real person comes on the line and asks me all sorts of questions about who in the world I am and why I'm calling. He then says that I'm in the wrong department, and I needed to be transferred. More holding. During the next five minutes, I learned that DirecTV loves the kids. The company is such a good steward of education that it provides DirecTV service to thousands of schools for free. Good to know. Now where's my freaking DVR that I paid for?

Second real person gets on the line. Actually, I'm not sure she qualifies as a real person, but she sounded as if she was inhaling and exhaling. I tell her what's up and she starts asking me stupid questions like where my DirecTV receiver is on my house. First floor or second? Does that matter if you're just installing a DVR? No. She's wasting my time. I hear her typing furiously in the background. I tell her I've been waiting for four and a half hours, and I ask if there's any way she can contact the installer. Silence. Silence. She says, "there's no note with directions to your house in the computer. What's the closest highway?" I proceed to give her directions to my house, which she pretends to type into the computer. I ask again if there's any way to contact the installer to find out if he intends to show up any time today. Silence. She says, "it's up to you whether you want to wait or reschedule." I say, "I can't make that decision if I don't know if and when the person is going to show up today. Is there any way to contact him or her?"

That's when she really started to tick me off. She says, "I'm sure he has a good reason for not being there." I say, "Yeah, but can we call him?" She says, "Not all of them have cell phones and it would be extremely rude for them to ask another customer to use their phone to call you." Extremely rude? Wanna talk about extremely rude, lady? How about your condescending tone? How about the fact that I've wasted four and a half (now five) hours of my life that I'll never get back, and I still don't know if and when I'm getting my DVR.

So here I sit. I really wish I could boycott DirecTV at this moment, but that would mean no more NFL Sunday Ticket. So basically, I'm up here on my soapbox, but no one is listening.

I admit it. I've been one of those moms this morning. It's nearly 11am, my kid and I are still in our PJs, and the TV is on. It's been on since 7:30am. Typically, I'm a TV Nazi when it comes to My Little Sunshine. He watches no more than one to two hours of TV a day ... except on Sundays during football season. It would be downright un-American to choose rules over a long-standing family tradition.

Soul Mate has been working horrendous hours. In fact, he was coming to bed as I was getting up this morning. It's his job, and I'm trying to handle everything else while he works. It's lonely and exhausting, and I haven't been an adult about it the entire time. In fact, I might have been more juvenile than my two year old a couple of times, but I'm doing the best I can.

This morning, it was all I could muster to pop a waffle in the toaster and slice up a banana for My Little Sunshine. I've tried drinking tea to snap out of this fog, but it ain't working. I've been lying on the couch or sitting in a chair barking orders at my kid. "Sunshine, get off your guitar!" "Sunshine, don't bang on the furniture!" "Seriously, Sunshine, I'm going to take away the guitar if you don't stop jumping on it!" "I mean it, Sunshine. I won't read anymore books if you don't chill out." I'm ticking off myself, so I can imagine what it's doing to Sunshine. My mom says he's one of those kids who's going to need constant stimulation. She said it with a tone that wasn't exactly positive. Reading my reaction, she followed it up with, "He's just so smart." As much as I hate to admit it, my mom's right in this case. Sunshine does need constant stimulation. On these days where I can't muster more than the occasional meal and diaper change, he's a monster. I blame myself, but, again, it's all I can do to stay awake right now.

So, imagine my horror when Sunshine came over with a fat, orange crayon in his mouth and said, "Mommy, icecream cone?" "Sunshine," I say, "get the crayon out of your mouth. Mommy's going to put the crayons away if you don't stop eating them." Sunshine senses a challenge. He quickly sizes up my mood and realizes I have no energy to fight. Looking me straight in the eye, he bites off the end of the crayon and commences to chomping. "Mmmmmm. Icecream good," Sunshine says with a twinkle in his eye. He chews for a moment as orange flakes and drool start to fly out of his mouth, and then he begins to gag. I stick out my hand, put it under his chin, and catch the falling pieces of masticated crayon. The gagging continues. Then, the crayon/milk puking begins ... in my hand of course. I'm so stunned by what's happening, that I don't know exactly what to do. I'm awake now, but I don't think I'll ever want a Dreamsicle again.

I started a campaign to clean up my potty mouth nearly three years ago. I surprised myself at how well I did. However, if you get me out of my kid's earshot, you might be shocked at what comes out of my mouth. I've been known to make sailors blush. It's not something I'm proud of. It just happened, and it's a hard habit to break.

Like I said, though, I've done a very good job of eliminating expletives from my vocabulary for the most part. Sometimes, though, it's not the bad words you have to worry about. Especially if you have a two year old sponge in your house. I happen to have one of those sponges scouring about, and this morning was another reminder of why you have to think before you speak, even if you don't plan on using the F word.

We have a nearly eight year old dog. She's a quirky little character, so she fits into our lives just fine. However, even at the ripe old age of 49 in dog years, she still likes to crap in my house. I've tried nearly everything to stop it, but nothing has worked. The "accidents" (I don't think they're accidents at all, frankly) have gotten worse in recent weeks, because my husband has been working crazy hours. The dog simply doesn't like change of any kind, and she reminds us of that by crapping on our carpet.

Anyhoo, I was wrangling the kiddo this morning to take him to some event called "Touch a Truck," which sounded super cool to me. I noticed a giant pile of dog crap on my living room carpet. This especially ticked me off, because I know for a fact that my husband was in said room until 6am, when he and the dog came to bed. How she crapped in the very same room where he was and he didn't notice is a very big mystery to me, but whatever.

So when I saw the dog this morning, I said to her in a very threatening tone, "dog, I'm going to beat you." Knowing nothing of the kind would ever happen, said dog simply jumped onto the bed and crawled under the covers. However, My Little Sunshine (a.k.a. "The Sponge") looked her direction and said, "I'm going to beat you, hee, hee, hee." At that very second, I nearly reverted back to my old ways, but I simply thought the four letter word I wanted to scream. "I'm going to beat you" isn't exactly the phrase you want your two year old going around spewing. That's how I know I still have a lot of work to do on the connection between my brain and my mouth. I think I might have to consult an engineer.

In my old life, it was easy to find motivation. First, I had to get out of bed in the morning to go to work to earn the paycheck to pay the bills. Once I was at work, motivation came in the form of relentless deadline pressure and an unpredictable news cycle. My newscast went on at the same time every day, inspiration, motivation, or not. I simply couldn't slack.

These days, I get up when My Little Sunshine gets up. I am not motivated by career goals or a paycheck, just the desire to be the best mom I can. Most days, it's easy to find motivation to accomplish that goal. It's everything else that causes me to search for motivation. I am no Domestic Goddess. I hate cleaning. I sometimes enjoy cooking, but only when My Little Sunshine can find a way to occupy himself for the time it takes for me to create a culinary masterpiece. He's two. That rarely happens, and so we eat takeout just as much as we did when I was working 60 hours a week.

I also have a very difficult time motivating myself to work on me. In my old life, I defined myself by my job. Now, I'm mostly defined by my roles as wife and mother, but I'm not the kind of person who's satisfied with that alone. I need something just for me that stimulates my mind, body and soul. Something that makes me feel like a part of something outside the walls of my modest home. I'm taking baby steps. Just like I once tried to balance my family life and work life, I am now trying to balance my family and my search for meaning in life.

I decided to start with the outside. I've found in my 31 years that it is much easier to fix exterior problems than interior ones. It's also easier to find motivation to fix those outside problems, because those are the ones that everyone else sees. Step one: join Jazzercise.

I've always been a girl who likes to shake it. I was on the dance team in junior high school, and it was one of the highlights of my teenage years. In college, I often closed down the local dance clubs, leaving the bar soaked from head to toe in sweat. I preferred to "rage solo," as I told countless annoying boys who tried to interrupt my spiritual groove with their infantile and uncoordinated gyrations. Back off, Jack Off. I didn't come here to be picked up by you. I came here to be picked up by the music. Seriously. You can, however, buy me a drink and then get lost.

Anyway, Jazzercise isn't exactly the scene I'm used to, but it's certainly more appropriate for motherhood than shutting down the clubs at 5am. It also fits into the available child care schedule, which is a bigger challenge than some non-moms might think. I've only been to three classes, but I'm totally psyched. First of all, it's totally fun. Second, the restorative powers of boo-tay shaking are unmatched by just about anything you can do by yourself. Third, I am inspired by the women around me.

Back in the day, I didn't really like girls much. I was a daddy's girl. Tomboy to the core. I'd rather play football and wrestle boys twice my age than play with dolls or makeup. Plus, being friends with girls was hard work. They liked to play games. With boys, it was much easier. They just wanted to have fun. Most of my friends were guys, until, well, um, now. Since My Little Sunshine was born, I have found myself longing for female companionship. Men simply do not understand how motherhood changes every aspect of your life, including the way your noggin works. I want to learn from the wisdom of other women who have experienced this journey and have successfully survived it.

So, my first day at Jazzercise, I looked around the room. There were women of all shapes and sizes. There were women of different races and no doubt different religions. There were certainly women of different economic status, although, most seem to be middle class or above. The coolest part for me is that there were women from the ages of 20 to nearly 80. No kidding. There was one woman in there who just went to her 60th high school reunion. She was dancing her boo-tay off and singing to Rhianan just like the college girls. Sure, she wasn't bouncing off the walls like some of them, but man, she was keeping up. I want to be that woman.

When I'm 80, I want to hang with the kids. I don't want to sit in my comfy chair watching mindless drivel on TV waiting to die. I want to suck all the marrow out of this crazy freaking life (Walden) until there's nothing more to suck. I still want to be shaking it. I still want to be smiling and laughing and thinking and growing. What's the point if you're not trying to be all that you can be until you can't be anymore?

So next week, if I'm having trouble finding motivation to work on me, I'm going to think about that woman who shakes her bee-hind in Jazzercise while fondly reflecting on dancing with a "boy" at her 60th high school reunion. I'm going to remember that she has survived this rat race more than twice as long as I have, and she's still running it. I'm going to get my butt off the couch and chase that inspiration. And I'm not going to stop there. I'm going to go up to her in class and tell her what she did for a complete stranger simply by being who she is. I'm going to tell her I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but whatever it is, I want to be like her.

Curses and bad words.

Two years ago, before My Little Sunshine was born, this post would have started more simply. It would have been one choice word that starts with an "S," ends with a "T," and has a two letter greeting in the middle. However, the day I found out I was pregnant, I started a serious quest to clean up my potty mouth. Granted, it needed some heavy duty cleaning, kid or not. I was a news person, in an environment where the F word flew around like flies on ... well, you know. Today, though, my potty mouth only comes out when I utter phrases like, "do you need to go pee pee?" I digress.

The point of this post is to explain my utter shock and disgust at a horrible discovery I made while looking in the rear-view mirror at My Little Sunshine yesterday: a long, vertical line centered squarely between my eyebrows. I did a double-take. In the old days, I would have screamed, "what the eff?" Today, however, I whispered, "what on god's green earth?" I mean, I'm only 31. My maternal grandmother looked 40 when she was 60, despite the fact that she had birthed and raised 12 children. That's something. Everyone tells me I don't look old enough to have graduated high school, let alone college. So, imagine my surprise when I saw this cavernous abomination on my face!

I'm not sure exactly how and when it got there. I have terrible vision, and I'm sure I have done more than my share of squinting in my lifetime. Plus, I live in a fairly sunny climate, and I have some incredibly fashionable, but not-so-functional sunglasses. I'm sure that hasn't helped. Plus, I've been known to be a bit of a Worry Wart. In fact, Soul Mate tells me that I would shrivel up and die on the spot if I didn't have something to worry about every waking moment. He claims if I don't have actual substantive issues to worry about, I will go as far as to create them in my little mind simply to occupy it with my daily dose of worry. I suppose the "ruminations" as shrinks like to call them certainly could have dug the ditch in my forehead while I wasn't looking. Either way, it's there and I'm not happy about it one bit.

Please note that I am not a vain person. I am one of few American females over the age of 10 who don't wear makeup. I don't even blow-dry my hair, let alone use Product. I don't change clothes ten times before I finally settle on something that makes my posterior region look like it's not the size of Texas. However, something happened when I truely looked at the person staring back at me in the mirror. I'm getting old, and I'm not nearly as successful/rich/beautiful as I had intented to be. What's up with that?

I have made it my goal in this new era of self exploration not to compare my life or accomplishments to others. We all have only one life to live, and we have to make choices that dictate the course of our lives. I have chosen to put my career on hold to spend a few precious years with My Little Sunshine. Some of my friends are far more successful in their careers, but they don't wake up every morning to a Soul Mate or a Little Sunshine. Some times, it's a tradeoff. There are people who seem to have it all, but I bet if you look a little closer, there's something you have that they wish they did. The bottom line is that we need to embrace who we are in the moment, caverns and all, and know that if we're not where we want to be, we have the choice to change.

I know I won't be erasing the vertical line on my face any time soon. Botox is simply not in the budget. However, perhaps if I try just a little every day to turn this frown upside down, I won't help the Worry Warts take over.

I'm starting this blog as I'm sure most people do: as an experiment. I've wanted to be a writer since I was 7 years old, and I've been practicing journalism as a hobby or a profession in the years since then. Harriet the Spy became my roadmap for life in elementary school. I started carrying around notebooks and recording the most mundane details in the life of a poor white girl who spent most of her time traveling the world through books. That decision at age seven carried me through the age of 30. Now at age 31, I don't really have any direction, other than from my two year old son. He pretty much dictates my daily schedule, my choice in music, and my general outlook on life.

Just two short years ago, I was a career woman, working to take over the world of television news. I lived and breathed my career. I had no friends outside of my workplace. I had no goals other than to be the best producer of news in the Western World. Now, I rarely even watch the news. It's funny how quickly your priorities can change. For the first time in my life, I'm not sure what I want to be when I grow up. All I know is that I want to make a difference some how in some way. I think I have something to offer. I just don't know exactly what that is or how to find it.

I titled this blog In Search of Walden, because it is a work that has resonated with me like no other. It's as if Henry David Thoreau was reading my not-even-close-to-being-formed mind when he wrote this book. If I were in a different time or place in the universe, I would like to undertake an experiment like that, but I'm a suburban wife and mother with responsibilities. Therefore, I'm going to conduct my search for meaning and purpose from my chaisse lounge in my cookie cutter vinyl siding house. It seems as good a start as any.

I've wanted to start a blog for years. My husband is the best writer I know, and he's faithfully written several blogs for years now. I'm not as talented as he is, and I'm also more fickle. I don't stick with things very well. This is a project I'd like to make work, since it is one that could give me some insight into my own mind and possibly be the creative outlet I need to get me off this quarter-life-crisis carousel. However, I'm making no promises that I can't keep. I will simply promise myself that I will try this little experiment and see where it takes me. If it takes me to a remote spot in the woods where I find the meaning of life, cool. If it merely takes me to the end of my cul de sac, so be it.