It's one thing to tell others to follow their dreams; it's something else entirely to do it for yourself. As children, we are told that we can be anything that we want to be. However, as we grow up, we find out that's exceedingly difficult. You may want to be a musician or an artist or a writer, but in general, these aren't usually steady gigs. No one wants to worry about if they're going to have work next week; we just want to know it will be there. We have bills to pay and food to buy. We need health insurance.

But sometimes, this is the life that calls to you.

A friend of mine calls me a sojourner. In my life, that has probably been as much necessity as it is design. I've lived in different places and had different careers. Though I've always enjoyed writing personally, I never considered it professionally. I was always encouraged to pursue it, however. I learned a love of writing from my grandmother, and I remember my father saying to me as a child that he wanted me to be a writer when I grew up. I had teachers encouraging me to teach language arts. I even had a friend who was a writer who was constantly encouraging me to submit my writing to magazines. But in the end, I came to follow this path on my own. I took a job editing website content and moved on to writing websites for small to medium-sized businesses. That was all it took for me to realize that writing was my dream, and that I wanted it to be my life.

Writing is a lifestyle, have no doubt about that. It consumes you. My life is full of notes jotted down in my phone or on random scraps of paper because I'm afraid I'll forget a great idea. I love writing. There are few things in the world that bring me peace the way writing does. I'm always encouraging others to write for themselves as well. I may yet be a sojourner, but writing provides all the different paths I could take. Here, there are endless possibilities. I never imagined I'd want to go back to school, and here I am talking about getting a Master's Degree in Strategic Communications. In the meantime, I have the ability to take on all kinds of assignments. I get to work with a plethora of interesting people. One minute I'm writing about the latest events in professional sports for a client in San Francisco, and the next I'm writing about the installation of pool liners for a client in Boston. I get to be creative, informative, funny, and maybe even touch a few hearts.

It's not easy starting a new life, though. It can be stressful and scary sometimes, but every time I see my work - it's worth it.

So with this, I'm fully embracing a writer's life, and taking one further step on the path to following my dreams.