Originally posted at SheLoves Magazine.

“If you come at four in the afternoon, I’ll begin to be happy by three.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

I’m a recovering Type-A personality. I haven’t made a long-term plan for the better part of five years. Instead, I’ve filled my life with short-term goals, retail jobs, freelance projects and adventures. I want to taste and see the WHOLE WORLD, so I pick and graze and move on when I’m done. It’s my drifting balloon-like personality that God somehow still manages to use sometimes.

I don’t run marathons; I sprint. I run as fast as I can and then I pass on the baton and call it a day.

The problem with being a sprinter is that I’m also a writer and that is a slowwwwwww process, a lifetime commitment, and it is definitely a marathon.

I have known I was a writer since I was 8 years old. It’s a common affliction for the poor souls who love books more than they love people or sports or candy.

I wrote my first novel when I was 12. I wrote my first blog post when I was 22. I can’t foresee a time when I will stop being a writer—it’s a filthy, unshakeable habit, I suppose.

But the dream of writing something big, like, I dunno, maybe A WHOLE BOOK, well that takes time, that takes hard work, that takes a plan. That’s big.

Six of my friends are writing BOOKS right now. They talk about book proposals and sample chapters and literary agents. I hear about how a financial advance is a terrifying motivator and that an editor is both the enemy and the hero all at once.

I look down the road towards writing MY BOOK with all that work and commitment and I think I prefer the idea that I might, someday (not this year) actually write that pesky little book. And I love that dream.

But for right now, I’m enjoying the anticipation of the dream more than the actual dream.

People like to tell me, “It won’t get any easier later” and “There’s never going to be enough time, so you just have to start now.” But I’m not letting the time slip idly by. I’m living life to its fullest and I’m writing about it here and there in blog posts and journals and the occasional restaurant napkin.

You see, I don’t have any other lofty, big plans (not real ones). I just have the one dream of pouring all my life into the pages of a very big, very funny book. Having it finished or published isn’t the point. The point is that I can wander the whole world, I can taste and see and smell and still look out to that same dream that I swear God built in me. And that, my friends, is pretty fantastic.