One day, I am going to be a writer and I will look back at this 34th year of my life, the one where I was in grad school and waitressed at nights and took care of my boys by day and I also freelanced and kept a house and attempted to take care of my body and tried my damnedest to maintain friendships. The year that I finished my first novel and started my second and thought I was going to lose my mind, being so overwhelmed and exhausted from all the effort I put into everything.
And I will smile, then, because it is over.
And because then I will know what I don’t yet: that I was so close to my dream. That all of that effort compiles, each little one on top of another into something big: bigger than me. My aspiration, which has always seemed so far off, farfetched, nearly unattainable, will be achieved then and I will have a new aspiration, even loftier than the first.
I will be proud of what I did: exactly what I had to. And I will have my Friday nights clear, my name not on some company’s schedule tacked to a bulletin board somewhere. I will pull my chair up to my desk and write, sipping a screwdriver, no doubt. Having things to write about, but different things, not only angst and stress and loneliness and quiet desperation.
I am only passing through.
Drawing breaths.
holly pelesky 
You should be proud of yourself