Now you know

It has been a dream off and on now for at least 25 years.

I've wanted to be a newspaper columnist. One of those people who spout off their opinions about this and that next to a little mug shot so you can judge their words by their mugs. My opinions aren't always about politics. More often about people. And life. And natural beauty. And the things you've been reading in this blog.

I first wrote a column 27 years ago when I was expecting my first child and about to retire from reporterhood. I wrote about the importance of chocolate during pregnancy. They ran the story but got the wrong mug. Some man -- we never figured out who -- was pictured in the text about being pregnant and craving chocolate. It was a bad start.

And it was pretty much the finish too.

When my children were little, I wanted to prove to myself that I really had something to say every week, so I sat down regularly to write, with kids here and there and everywhere.... and it worked. The ideas kept coming. I was surrounded by ideas.

Ideas weren't the problem.

Editors were.

There was one at a daily in Oregon who liked my stuff and offered me the job. But before it was signed and certified, she was promoted to a position where she no longer hired columnists.

I tried everyone from the Washington Post to the San Francisco Examiner at times and when nobody gave me the go-ahead I talked my husband out of some investment money and published my favorite columns in a book I called, "In This Together." Because as the saying goes, when your ship hasn't come in, you have to swim out to it.

And when you have something to say, you have to say it.

But then the trick is finding someone who wants to read it. Not my specialty.

I know being a columnist would be hard.

I have "exposure" dreams whenever I'm about to publish something -- dreams that I can't find any privacy. I have a tendency to take any criticism hard, mulling it over and over, hearing it again and again.

Columnists are exposed and they are criticized.

So why is it still a dream? And wouldn't a rational person abandon it?

I don't know. But I can't. Not yet.

So I thank those who read this blog. It is my column.

Thank you to family and friends. And to those who have posted postive comments from Brazil and Croatia and India -- places I couldn't have reached even in a newspaper.

I hope what I have to say has meaning.

I hope somehow it makes the world a better place. Or maybe helps people see the world as a better place.

Because no matter what anyone else says, if a tree falls in a forest -- even if no one is there to hear it, I believe it makes a significant sound.