Way back when Jim and I were growing our little marketing and printing enterprise, not a day went by when I didn’t think about how much I wanted to be a real writer. I pretended to play one for our company by conjuring up marketing materials and pitching everything from hard drives to fertilizer, but that didn’t exactly rock my world. Our days were unbelievably long, and ten years flew by before I ever wrote anything other than chicken scratch in a journal.

Bathroom motivation.

When you’re busy chasing after the stereotypical American Dream, there’s no time to follow your heart. You live for everyone else’s vision of what your life should look like, instead of pursuing your burning desires. Dreams get shelved and we die before finding out what we’re really made of.

Our Jerry’s cancer diagnosis was the wake-up call I needed: I didn’t want to face death someday wondering if I could have made it as a writer. Since 2007 I’ve been working hard to make that happen, and now I don’t have to wonder if I’ve made it.

Last weekend a new must-see movie called “Rudderless” made its debut — featuring “RV Life,” a magazine I write for each month. In a scene introducing a music shop proprietor named Del (played by the awesome Laurence Fishburne), he holds up an issue of RV Life that features a headlining article I wrote, titled “RV Entrepreneurs.”

RV Life Magazine spotlight in Rudderless movie.

Del goes on to describe the long-anticipated retirement he’s fantasizing about, which includes his wife’s full-time RVing dream. How he attempts to make that happen is part of the plot, so you’ll have to watch it to find out.

For whatever reason, out of the many print magazines about camping and RVing, RV Life was picked for this scene. Maybe it’s the bold masthead, or the “RV Entrepreneurs” headline that relates to proprietor Del’s life. It had nothing to do with my writing, but seeing the magazine in a movie was jaw-dropping validation that my dream is happening in real-time.

I. Am. A. (Real) Writer.

 “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” Walt Disney