Keep reaching for your goal

I'm listening to a video chat from the national SCBWI conference about setting and achieving your career goals- and it occurred to me that I have actually done this. I had a full-time job in a library (around wonderful children, wonderful co-workers, and books books books.) I also wanted to write books. I ended up writing many books and over 40 of them were published. We won't talk about the ones still filling drawers in my office filing cabinets. And for about a year I was a famous author. :) (then I went back to being a working mom who wrote books in her "spare" time. :) )

I also reached my goal of performing as a musician and hanging out with other musicians (in college) and later with music fans. (followed the Moody Blues for a while and even got to meet them for a quick minute backstage with a friend.)

I got very, very tired of shoveling snow (one year we had over 4 feet of snow - in Maryland!) So I now live in the land of eternal springtime - southern California coast.

I wanted more instruction about writing, so I went for a second masters degree (the first was in Library Science that I attended with my husband), at VCFA - Vermont College of Fine Arts, writing for Children and young adults.

Have I reached all my goals? nope. If you stop reaching for goals, you shrivel up and die.

So I keep reaching.

Adventures with famous people

We got to talking on FB about famous people we've met and this was my story:

I was waiting in a small airport a few years ago and realized that Garrison Keillor was going to be on the same plane! So when I passed him, I ever so casually said, "Hi." 　 This was after I had spent a week at a writer's retreat with Bruce Coville and lots of other well-known writers. I had been sitting with Bruce at the airport and he pointed Garrison out to me.  

In the 1990s one of my co-workers was a huge Moody Blues fan and she won some backstage tickets and we got photographs with the band. It was run very quickly. group of four. stand by one of the four band members. picture taken. move along please for the next four. Well, since I also was a local newspaper journalist, I tried to come up with one comment or question for each member as I passed him. And they graciously responded.  

(and one summer we went on a Moody Blues field trip and attended four or five concerts, following them from near Washington, DC, to the Taj Mahal casino (where we exited the venue behind Trump's wife, her daughter Tiffany) and on to the venue near Philadelphia. At which point I had to go back home and go back to work. The others followed the band to some other venues.  

That was a fun time being groupies.)