One woman's quest to make something of herself. During nap time.
Me: Mother, wife and writer watching forty climb the front steps like a peddler pushing time, and me with nowhere to hide.
The writer part used to come first, the forty used to be thirty, and marriage and motherhood were abstract activities I thought I'd try someday. Ah, growing up. If only it was the thrill promised when we were six.
I have written hundreds of articles and essays that have been published. I have written a book that has not been published. It has been rejected. Repeatedly. Eventually, I set the whole stupid manuscript on fire. Did that stop me on this preposterous quest to publish a book? No. All I want in the whole wide world besides being a good mother to my two tiny daughters is to be an author.
But writing is hard. And the publishing industry is a beast. And I am terrified of failure. And most of my days are spent trapped under a pile of plastic princesses or scraping peanut butter off of the wall.
Will I pull this author thing off? Or will I ditch writing, adopt a Xanax habit, abandon my own identity and live the rest of my life vicariously through my children?
Hmm, let's find out.

Kim Cooper Findling is the editor of Central Oregon Magazine and the author of Day Trips From Portland: Getaway Ideas for the Local Traveler and Chance of Sun: An Oregon Memoir. Kim is an ambassador for Travel Oregon's Ask Oregon program. Her work has appeared in Horizon Air, Alaska Air, Runner's World, Sky West, The Best Places to Kiss NW, High Desert Journal and more, and she was the 2011 winner of the Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest. Kim grew up on the Oregon Coast and has lived in Central Oregon since 1995. See www.kimcooperfindling.com.