words fail

A little while back, I did an interview for Bookpage magazine, and in it, when I was asked if I had a message I would like to send to children, I said something awfully cliched, which was "never give up on your dreams" (I also said "beware of monkeys wearing wigs", which is just a terrifying thing to say to a kid, but I choked, and it was the first thing that popped into my head). The unfortunate thing is, I meant it (not the monkey part).

As inspirational advice goes, "never give up on your dreams" is right up there with "don't do drugs" and "stay in school." It doesn't mean anything, unless you know why the person saying it is saying it. I didn't have enough room on the questionnaire to give my reasons, mostly because it was taken up with a freakish drawing of, that's right, a monkey wearing a wig.

Had I had the space, I wouldn't have attempted anything profound. I'm not really qualified to. I've never had to overcome any major obstacles to achieve my goals, and no one has every told me I couldn't achieve them. I would have simply said that I never gave up on my dreams, and they came true. If that's not a good enough reason, then I don't have one.

And then I might have made the monkey's wig bigger. It looks kind of flat to me.