I've been packing around a piece of notebook paper in my bag. Once it was neatly and tightly folded, an attractive package protecting the information wrapped within the folds. Now it's crumpled and disheveled, like a pretty girl in a party dress heading home after too many cocktails and too many dances. It is dirty and has impossible to explain coffee spots sprinkled across the blue lines page.

It's the hand written outline of the novel I was working on last summer. I carried it and a USB drive with me everywhere I went because you never knew when a few minutes of writing time would spring up. I wrote and wrote and thought and thought and then I stopped. I wasn't overwhelmed or distracted, I just couldn't find the things to say. So I stopped writing. The goal was to be done with the novel by my 30th birthday. That's not going to happen. It makes me a little sad but not too much because I've got a lot of other dreams I'm chasing right now. I go from being propelled by furious confidence and determination to being immobilized by self-doubt but then I swing back again pretty quickly. It's a curious, exciting time of chasing dreams for me because I'm chasing them and full well expecting to succeed in them all but trying to find the tools that will help me not be crippled by any failure I might me along my path. Resisting the urge define yourself by any failure is a lot harder than it sounds.

I've taken the crumpled paper out of my bag. But I made sure all the info from it is safely backed up. Instead of a failed dream let's call it temporary displacement. There are other dreams to be chased and other successes to be had. This dream will have its day eventually and it will be a good day indeed.