dream reader

When I first read the Blogging 101 challenge for today, I felt a bit stumped. My dream reader? I’m not sure that I’m the dream writer of my own blog, so how am I supposed to create my ideal reader and channel them while writing a post? It seemed a bit impossible.

I decided to sleep on it and leave it until the morning. Of course, by this morning I had completely forgotten about the entire thing. It didn’t cross my mind when I dragged myself out of bed and prayed for the water to heat quickly. I didn’t remember it when I picked out some “work appropriate” clothing and added my own flair with a new scarf. I didn’t even get a hint of it when I scarfed down some oatmeal and screwed the top on my Mock Convention Tervis tumbler.

Then I left my apartment, and everything changed. Walking out into the crisp fall morning was a literal breath of fresh air. Fall is my favorite season; I love the endless number of pumpkin baked goods, the chilly nights watching football under the stars, and the ever popular sweater, jeans, and boots combo.

And it hit me: what if my dream reader wasn’t one specific person who loved (and would want to read about) all of the same things that I do? What if he or she was someone who loved just one of the many things that I love? What if they could gain a connection through that one thing and end up sticking around for the rest of it? That would be my ideal reader.

When I got on the bus this morning, I started thinking about what kind of reader would connect with my newfound status as a user of public transportation. My mind immediately went to another of my college friends. First of all, she’s a huge environmentalist. As in she recycled for half of our friend group simply because she hated to have all of our waste on her conscious. Secondly, riding the bus makes me think of traveling around Europe, particularly the month that I spent in Ireland with this specific friend. European countries have such better systems of public transportation than we do in America, and I can only hope that by riding the bus consistently throughout the week I’m helping to encourage the growth of our own bus and train systems. So perhaps a reader (my dream reader?) could latch onto my positive Metro riding experiences and begin a dialogue with me about his or her own thoughts!

Another reason that I had such a great morning directly correlates to my being a bus rider. Instead of having to deal with awful morning traffic for 30 minutes a day, I get to sit on a temperature-controlled bus and not contribute to our abundance of greenhouse gases. Recently I’ve taken up a new habit that makes my mornings even more enjoyable: I’ve started going through my extensive reading list. I have a huge, never-ending, I-will-be-lucky-to-read-all-of-these-before-I-die list of books, specifically classics, that I want to read.  The current selection from the literary canon is Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. I’m a huge fan of his novel The Bostonians, and although I’m only about a quarter of the way through this new one, I’m really enjoying it so far. Maybe my dream reader has a reading list that he or she would want to share with me. I’d love to start doing a monthly book club… Hint hint!

Once the bus dropped me off at Government Square, I had a very short, comfortable walk to my building and then a little skip of an elevator ride to the 29th floor, which has seriously the best view in the city. In the moment that I had to take in the view, I knew exactly what I was going to write about today.

I hope that somewhere at least one of my dream readers is enjoying it.