Happy birthday to me.

"If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling's whole life would have been entirely different."
-The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

Do you have a book that you swear influenced your life dramatically since you first read it? Or at least one that you can identify with the character? Mine was always L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle, which is really a fairy tale at it's heart. It is about a woman who at the start of the book is celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday. She is single, at the time where "the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man", and has always been rather shy and oppressed by her mother and her family. What was that? Shy and oppressed by her family? Ding! Ding! Ding! Of course this fed right into how I felt growing up.

But, she is told by a doctor whom she snuck out and visited on her birthday that she has a heart condition and only has a year to live. Valency realizes that she needs to escape her monochrome life and does it fantastically.

So, this is it. This is my twenty-ninth year, so it is my year to live big and tell people exactly what I think. Ok, maybe not exactly because sometimes a little tact goes a long way. Because, while I haven't been diagnosed with a heart condition that will leave me dead in a year's time, it might still be quite interesting to try to be bolder and more honest with everyone.

We'll give it a try.