The neighbor pulled into her driveway at 3:30. My home office window faces this driveway, my peripheral vision disallowing ignorance of their comings and goings. The 3:30 arrival kicks me into gear, reminds me if I haven't showered yet that I am somewhat pathetic, that my daughter will be out of school in an hour, that I have two and a half hours left to go before I really have to stop to make dinner.

Three-thirty is often when my blood pressure starts to rise, realizing I'm not going to finish the list I made at 7:30 that morning in time for dinner.

The list isn't realistic. But that doesn't matter to the panic, and that's something I'm working on but circumstances don't always reinforce.

Sometimes I let my mind wander to my life if my workday ended at 3:30, if it were me unloading my car and following my child around in the sunshine. If it were me off in the months of summer. My neighbor to one side is a teacher, to the other a guidance counselor. Jobs fraught with their own troubles, for sure, but these don't matter when I'm stressed and daydreaming about what it would be like to be someone else, someone in the sunshine. Reality doesn't matter in daydreams. Regardless of how much you love your work, daydreams make the world go 'round.

I let my daydreams play as day continued into evening and I went back to my computer after giving the little angel a bath. Just as I used to take the Sears catalog to my room when I was a kid and circle everything I would buy if I had a million dollars, I find myself reimagining my days if I pulled into my driveway at 3:30, finished with work.

And I wonder if she looks at my darkened windows when she leaves to teach at 6:15 am and envies me, still asleep.

I remember last August reading Erin Kotecki Vest's post about her new job at BlogHer and being so jealous, even though I know Erin and I know how hard she worked to position herself for that job.

I've struggled as a working parent. I hate the commute. I hated having the little angel be the very last kid at daycare. Sometimes I was very bitter.

Somewhere, in the midst of my ruminating, I realized it's not fair and not realistic to wait for life to reach out and hand me my wishes on a platter. I realized the only person who could change my career is me.

I want to be a writer, one who spends my time thinking about real issues that matter to women (men, too, but I'll be honest -- women). One who takes time to follow current events and distill what they mean to me and to humanity. One who reads great blogs and responds to them. One who doesn't have to sneak onto Twitter and worry The Man is going to put the smackdown on my Internet access.

When Sleep Is for the Weak came out last September, I thought I was done. I thought my life would permanently change. But (as authors will tell you), it didn't. I realized there needed to be more books, that this first book was just a stepping stone, a calling card, a launching pad. I cut back to four days a week at my corporate job to have more time to write. I got my first national magazine hit in the November issue of Scholastic Parent & Child. I started selling more articles online. I started getting paid more to do what I loved. I started working on my novel, posting my work on Kindle, taking on more responsibility at BlogHer, and yes, there were a lot of days when I thought blogging might possibly be a ghetto in which I'd never get paid a living wage. People asked me why I wrote for free or nearly for free. I've made about 50 cents an hour on a good day for the past five years doing what I love.

I've pitched more ideas than I care to share that have gone nowhere. I've pitched a few that are in flux. My writing notebook is overflowing with half-baked projects, pitch ideas, lists of topics about which I mean to write. I've struggled to compartmentalize that writing into the time I have for it. I've nearly quit reading due to the time it takes to write.

That is going to change.

I've accepted a position with BlogHer as assignment editor. I start in two weeks. After five years of people asking where I'm going with this blogging thing, I finally have an answer. I'm going to funnel all the ambition, grammar geekdom, corporate organizational skills, excitement and intellectual curiosity I have into the BlogHer editorial team. The one led by Katie Couric's top four pick for most influential people (not women, people) in new media.

And I'm going to stop questioning my instincts.