Back in the day, when I was about 4 years old, I saw an episode of Caillou that changed my life. I don't remember the details, just that someones house was on fire and there was a cat stuck inside, and the firemen and women drove in, squirted the windows with their hoses a few times, and what do you know, the fire was put out and the cats were safe and sound. After watching this, I marched over to my mom and declared: "Mommy, I want to be a fireman." My mom just laughed and told me that It's impossible for a girl to be a fireman, and that I meant to say fire woman. I figured that would do. So it was decided. I would be a fire woman. And that was that.
But then, one average day in first grade, I was exposed to the world of Hannah Montana, and my ambitions of being a fire woman were abandoned. I decided I would be a singer. No matter that I couldn't sing, I would find a way. My friends and I would have mini concerts for our parents every day and we all assumed that there wasn't any possibility that the music industry wouldn't accept us, I mean how could they not? We were fabulous.
Then came the day that we wrote our very first essay in second grade with indentations, paragraphs, and the whole nine yards (the concept of indentation was one that took awhile to understand, but it was very thrilling). I had a really... interesting second grade teacher. Her name is Mrs. Mullvihill. Sometimes she could be really sweet, but she was not happy that day. We were lined up at her desk while she graded our essays in front of us. Red marks covered everyone's papers. "Your work is all crap!" She shouted at us. And one thought was running through all of our innocent second grade brains: "Oh my god she just said the c word." I was next in line to get my essay graded. I was shaking. What if she yelled at me? Her red pen hovered over my paper but as she read, she never used it. When she was done she smiled at me. Now, I've always been a big goody-goody (shocker, right?) so when she said "Emily, read your essay to the class, I want everyone's essays to be like this." every inch of me was filled with pride. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a writer.
Even while I was undergoing my fire woman and rock star stages, I still had a love for reading and writing. I learned to read at a pretty young age, but even before I did, I would make up my own stories based on the pictures in the books. As soon as I could write, I started to write books. They obviously weren't best-selling novels, but to me they were works of art. They were four pages of printer paper tied together with string with about a sentence on each page. My first was titled Aliens and featured a different colored alien on each page. It went something like this: "Green aliens, blue aliens, purple aliens, fat aliens, tall aliens, pink aliens. The end." I was so proud. There is something very rewarding about having an idea to do something, whether it be climbing a mountain, painting a bedroom, or mastering the art of Kung Fu, starting that thing, and then finishing it. Finishing is always the best part. Sure, the process is OK, but if you think about it, we never would have started the project in the first place if we weren't already dreaming of the finished product.
I still love writing today. There is never really a time when I say "Ew, gross, writing." probably because if I ever am not in the mood to write, I tell myself that it could be worse. This could be math. And that helps me love it. But truthfully, there are always stories and poems running through my head. It's a little freaky. I'll just be walking home from school and my brain will say something like "It was a cloudy day, and Emily was walking home from school..." and by the time I get home, I'll have just read an entire book about how I walked home from school. Sometimes it makes me feel crazy. I also write poems in my head, but those are on purpose. My brain doesn't just start reading poems to me like it does books (I'm not psycho I promise). If I really like the poem I've come up with, I write it down or type it, and then elaborate on it. I try to do that with the stories that go through my brain too, but I'm really bad at writing long things without an assigned topic, so I usually end up with a bunch of first paragraphs of stories, without a plot. I am hoping I will overcome this thinking-of-something-to-write-about barrier, so I can write a best-selling novel one day (or at least try), but if not, I'll still pursue my writing dreams. I could be a poet. Or a newspaper writer. Or a magazine writer. There are so many types of writers, which I also love: endless possibilities. This also poses a problem for me though, because I can never make up my mind. But I do know I want to be some kind of writer. Which probably explains why this blog was extremely long (sorry about that).
So on that note, I would like to say goodbye to everyone, because this is our last assigned blog. I am going to try to blog in the summer, but... just in case: bye everyone!!