Following my writing dreams, Finding my writer's voice

My mornings start early, as in very early. The kids start waking up at 5:45, so I have to be up a few minutes before that. Things are very hectic up to the time the kids leave for school. A few days of the week, I try to run 3k after I bring them to school. On the days that I feel lazy, I do tae-bo or other aero activity for 30 minutes to an hour.

Mid-morning is usually the time that I can put my feet up and take it easy. It’s chill time. I check my inbox, surf the net, or start a new blog post, keep in touch with friends, read, clean my desk... oh well, you get the drift.

It was one of these relaxing mornings a few days ago. I received the usual bunch of email messages; a few from friends; some from Facebook informing me of a new comment to a thread I commented on; yet another from People magazine giving me my daily dose of celebrity gossip; one from Martha giving me my cookie recipe of the day, et cetera, et cetera. Then again, one stood out from the rest. It came from someone named Kat von Einsiedel. The European sounding name intrigued me, so I passed over the rest and clicked on this particular message first.

What great news! Turns out Kat is the managing editor for Good Housekeeping, informing me that:

Hi Tina! I'm not sure if Jing mentioned that we'll be printing your Bee article in our September issue.

Here it is, my very first published work: