Happy Anniversary...

To me! If you want to be specific.

Yesterday was the one-year mark, an exact year to the day when I first started this blog on a whim in my English 1A class. I couldn't help it, I was bored and needed distraction. Facebook was out for that moment, so I impulsively set up a blog, on my then-new Google account. Not the most inspired way to begin a blog, true, but I have to admit some of my best acts come from impulse and instinct.

I would've posted yesterday in honor of the date, but I was up to my eyeballs in biology review (mid-term today...ARGH!!!) and I didn't want to be distracted. But I CAN be distracted now, since I'm going to review with my best friend Kirsten later today! In the half-an-hour before class, no less. But I'll manage somehow.

I've had a lot of fun posting up on here. Sure, there's been some spats and angry impulses (all on my part, I will concede), but the good kind of outweighs the bad, in this case. I've posted what few writing advice I can give, recommendations/reviews for books, my music preferences, and every so often, did some shameless fan-girling (the last post...heh heh) and maybe (possibly, more than likely) bored you all to tears chatting about people I made up in my head and their trials and trouble. I've changed the background of the blog more times than I care to admit and will probably change it again once the season does. (I'm thinking some cute Thanksgiving/fall/harvest motif. What say you?)

There are times (more than a few) when I doubt myself. That when I start thinking that my family and my loved ones are just humoring me, that my writing ability isn't half as great as I think it is. That all I am is a twenty-year old college student who still lives at home with her parents, and dreams about growing up, getting out, getting a job, a license, getting married and one day, having kids. Oh, and winning the Pulitzer Prize and getting on the New York Times  best-seller list.  And becoming a librarian. These are the extent of my ambitions at the moment. Am I up to it? I wonder. Am I just fooling myself with delusions of grandeur?

It isn't really the fear of inadequacy that I have. I already know I'm inadequate, in more ways than one. What frightens me more than anything is the prospect that I am as good as people seem to think I am. I'll look at what I write and think, This is not that great. I don't even know what I'm typing half the time, I'm just putting words together in my head and I think they sound okay.  I get nervous when my brother Aaron, who I know loves me and is always honest with me about my work, tells me that I am a better writer than he is (though he's the better story-teller, we both acknowledge). Surely the twenty-year old who has never been out in the world on her own, the twelve-year old who was scared and bullied, the fifteen-year old who was socially awkward and angry at the world, can't come up with anything that particularly brilliant, insightful, or interesting.

But  those of you who read this strange little blog of mine seem to think my tangent-riddled, rambling style of writing is worth reading. Even amusing and funny. Even insightful and interesting. That my words mean something, that I am better than I hope. And for that, I thank you all, most humbly.

Stick with me, good people, and we'll go far. Farther than I could ever dream or hope or imagine. I hope you all are watching. The day is coming when I'm going to light up the sky. So I hope and pray.

Over & Out, I remain, Your Blogmaster,
Rachel