Work-related drama has reached a Level Chili Pepper Red today and I have no idea what to do about it. It’s not even my issue, really, but all of this tension makes it very, very hard to focus. Like when I come in and see that someone has taken the good stapler from my desk and replaced it with the shitty one that doesn’t even work, even though I have about thirty thousand more things to staple than that someone does. And because I’m not the one involved in the ~*~DrAmA~*~, I’m the one everyone can still talk to, but only in hostile I’M-PISSY-AND-TAKING-IT-OUT-ON-YOU-ALSO-STEALING-OFFICE-SUPPLIES voices. It’s exhausting and unrelenting and it sucks even more that half of my immediate family works here and we’re all fed up and oh I just don’t know how to handle this.

I don’t want to work here. That’s how I want to handle this. I want to continue on my path of a new career and I think I’m on the right track. My second essay on being a stepmama was published at Mamalode yesterday and I am beside myself with glee about it. Are writers supposed to be all cool and unimpressed about their writing projects? Because I definitely am not.

I was really, really proud of that piece. I’ve read it several times since I wrote it and every time, I’m left with this pride just swelling up in my chest. I’m not thinking “Oh, I should’ve wrote it this way” or “I wish I didn’t use that phrase”, etc. I’m reading it and every time I’m thinking I did it. I am a two-time published author. I can do this thing.

Several of my friends on Facebook, friends I haven’t talked to in years, commented on it to tell me how much they enjoyed it. Co-workers with my mom at Emory told her how talented I was. A reader commented on the essay and told me she loved the story. My journal’s hits quadrupled yesterday thanks to that essay.

I love the feeling of writing words and it helping somebody. There have been SO many times that I’ve read a blog post or an essay or an article and commented with: I needed this today, thank you. The thought that someone out there read my essay yesterday and maybe sighed with relief or laughed or thought I needed this today makes my heart swell.

This is what I want to do. I want to be a writer.

And an actor. And a baker and a mama and a wife and a seamstress and a pianist and a fluent French speaker and and and and…

I’m feeling like I can do it all today. Like I can do it all everyday because I can. And I pray that the more I write about being a stepmama, the more exposure my essays will get. Because this being a stepmama thing? This loving kids like they’re your own even though they’re not? It fills me with such passion. I want to talk to all stepmoms, all stepkids, all stepfamilies and share my story and my hopes and my dreams. Because when I first knew that I would be a stepparent someday, I searched for some online support and found nothing. All I could find were “stepmom groups” that basically gave you a list of things NOT to do: don’t discipline the children, don’t come between them and their father, don’t force them to like you. One website in particular made my blood boil. The first thing it said was “A stepfamily is NOT a family. All stepfamilies will require counseling.”

What?

This is what I have to change. I have to turn that all around and show people that a family is a family is a family.

And so far? Looks like I’m on the right track.