My awesome university, the one that is helping me to reinvent my life–to finally follow my passion as a writer–is hosting a contest to celebrate fearlessness on campus. It’s a lovely campaign to instill pride in our strive, to recognize in ourselves that we can follow our dreams and succeed, that we can be the best possible version of ourselves if we but believe in ourselves.

For my part, going back to college is the keystone of a lifelong passion to write, a dream that once sat on a shelf to make room for a career that seemed more “successful,” but was not my dream. Thanks to another hiccup in my life (which I don’t want to talk about . . . yet), all kinds of wondrous things spilled out of my heart to be collected, rediscovered and placed back in the focus where they belong.

Writing is my passion, my dream. It is who I am. I am fearlessly, doggedly reaching for that dream again. There is no more motivating place to do this than on a campus surrounded by thousands of people following their dreams. It is here where my mentors and teachers and peers come to goad and teach and learn their craft. It is here where my dream will take shape.

Help us celebrate our fearlessness. Visit www.fearlesspsu.com and click like for those of us who are making our dreams come true. (And here is mine). =)

Perhaps we can inspire you to find the life you’ve always wanted, too. Join us on a campus near you!

There’s room for everyone’s dreams.

There’s actually two of them. One is in French . . . talk about redundant.

So the thing is, I exhumed and re-animated this blog as the final project for my Women, Writing and Memoir class (or . . . I just started a literate version of the Zombie Apocalypse).

I’m actually earning credit writing this thing! (I KNOW, RIGHT!!)

But it has come to my attention, which is a hard thing to do sometimes, that there isn’t a whole lot of “Me” in my memoir-slash-bloggie-thing. Correction: There’s plenty OF me, but not a whole lot ABOUT me.

~holds hand to forehead, peers into the balcony section and utters a dramatic sigh~

Not getting out of it that easily, huh? (argh)

TARDIS2Well then, I suppose I’ll have to start feeding quarters to the old way-back machine and get it to dredge the channel for Bits of Miki. I hope they haven’t decomposed too much; otherwise I’m liable to get all sappy and serious, which makes me break out in hives.

But first, this message on the medium of “memoir”:

There’s Biography, right? And then there’s Memoir. ~looks closely~ okay, not quite conveying it.

The two are both wonderfully entertaining methods of telling a life’s story, but they are very different critters: Like Dogs and Octopusseses. Dogs will research, finding reliable dates to tell a story as History. Whereas Octopi (wait, an Octopi* is 8 x π, right?) will tell you a story from personal perspective–where the same event will happen slightly differently for each Octopus present based on their emotional focus at that moment. Octopi are all about emotion, where Dogs deal in events. Octopi can write poetically, where Dogs must keep it real. Octopi can be squidgy with the facts, as long as the meaning is authentic. Dogs just walked off in a fit of jealousy and disgust.

I don’t know why animals keep taking over my blog. ~sigh~

Anyway . . . what the octopi was trying to say was: the stories you are about to hear are true; the names, heights, genders, diets, occupations and shoe sizes may have changed to protect the innocent.

Stay tuned and buckle those seat belts . . . because it’s the law. ~giggle~

[ *My mathematician says that Octopi is = 25.13274122871835(…). My biologist seems to think that me and my mathematician are both three steps away from the loony bin. I’m more inclined to side with the math here. I think my biologist is still upset I set her poor cramped pet octopus free to live in nature . . . . how was I to know they can’t survive in the forest. I don’t want to talk about it. ]