I have generally always taken the road less traveled, from the first moment I was born to the moment that I’m living right now. This weeks Creative Buzz Hop is all about the road less traveled and the inspiration that keeps coming from being off the beaten path. Maybe that’s more astute to my road–the beaten path that one can barely see through the overgrown weeds and brush.

Anyway, this week there is a video from the Kid President, which is a vid that I’ve seen before. You can find it here. This gets posted every Wednesday and then no Thursdays all the links go in (I’m late as I took a hiatus from life for my birthday yesterday!). The goal of this Creative Buzz Hop is to write something creative from the inspiration of the week (at least, that’s what I understand it to be). Then link up your post here and read all the other posts AND comment on those posts. It’s to create community and inspiration among us. So join in!

Here’s my response to the inspiration this week.

Sometimes it’s not all about the journey and sometimes it’s not all about the end. Sometimes it is all about the beginning, the moment when the dream is decided and excitement enters the system. The road less traveled or the beaten path becomes a viable choice in the way of life and the first step is taken toward that path–sometimes there is a wait to get there.

When I was twelve years old, I started writing on occasion with my friends. We wrote a massively long Lord of the Rings fanfiction, which involved so many characters, so many details, and a great amount of humor. We never finished it, but I didn’t stop writing. My senior project for high school involved looking at the publishing industry, finding the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing, interviews, research, paper writing and the likes. I was looking for my anthology of poetry and short stories that compiled the first of my writings. Now, eight years later, it scares the living daylights out of me to open that document and even LOOK at those writings.

Needless to say, I was not very good back then. I’m also still improving even though I have entered the publishing world. Eight years I waited to publish, and twelve years I’ve been writing. Not bad for a little girl from the hobunk state of Montana. Inspiration came with the idea of the dream. The idea to publish and to write and to get my work out there. It was all about the dream, that moment of realization of what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, and knowing that there were going to be hardships and great joys all along the way–there still are, even after getting to this point.

This is true for all my dreams. Nothing is smooth sailing, it is always off the beaten path or the road less traveled or the stick in the mud! The point is to see the dream and reach for it. To keep going, to trek on, to work hard and never give up until that goal and dream is reached.

But then what happens?

I am twenty-four years old. By this time next year, I will have completed all the dreams that I came out of high school with (at least the ones that I remember). I will have my Master’s in Divinity, I will be well on my way through the ordination process, I will (in theory) by published with my first trilogy and another series on the way. I will be doing everything that I thought I would be doing. So, where does that leave me?

This is the scariest prospect of the beaten path for me right now. I don’t know where to go once the road diverges again. It’s not simply just one path that Robert Frost was writing about, it’s not even two paths. There are so many of them that they make up a maze of wanderings throughout the life of each individual, each family, each pairing and grouping of friends. Sometimes the cross each other, sometimes they get so close the walkers can touch, and sometimes they are so far apart that other paths cannot be seen or even thought of. Where does that leave the world? On any one and only chosen path? Or a path that diverges once, twice, so many times that we lose count of the ways and directions that we have gone?