Lady Gaga Inspires Me to Follow My Dreams

The day I left Cowboy I read in a Cosmopolitan magazine a quote from Lady Gaga "Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams.", and went immediately to the store and bought one of her CDs for more inspiration. I had no idea where the CD was about to lead me that afternoon as I drove to the next town over just to listen to the whole thing. I didn't know that she would give me the courage to leave the house of tears that afternoon. A few weeks later, on the 11th anniversary of my brothers death, the lure of my Lady Gaga CD had me driving all over Gillette to occupy myself, and I went to the spot where I met Cowboy and the city of Gillette the first time. If I was a smoker, I would have been puffing a cigarette at that gas station listening to one song in particular as I imagined that cold February night in the same place. I texted Cowboy that I missed him and told him where I was, and he texted back that he was herding horses in Montana and included a phone picture, it was a trip I really wished I could have gone on with him. I really liked his family, and wish I could see them again too, they live in Montana.

I started driving again, and Lady Gaga led me to some kind of frontier museum. I walked in to the museum and started looking at the vast collections of guns, spurs, and wagons. They had a restored sheep herders wagon from the turn of last century, and I loved how cozy it looked inside with a neat bed, table, and stove. It just might be the first RV ever made. I wish I could take that wagon with me on my state-wide camping this summer when I look for birds. Nearby was a research library, which made me curious enough to ask the guy at the front desk about it. He handed me a book full of local families and said the library had all the raw documentation for them in it. I started studying the book, searching for interesting stories of pioneer women who I might be able to use in a novel. Someone who worked at the museum walked up to the front desk and the guy behind the desk pointed to me, parked on an old white couch with the book in the gun room, and he told her that I had been looking at the book so long that she should help me. She walked over, introduced herself, and I explained that it is my dream to write a historic fiction novel. She was so helpful, even going as far as researching stories of women she has heard of in the local library. She gave me a list of books to start with and I have since fallen in love with the story of Elinore Stewart, told in letters that she wrote to her former boss in Denver. She talks about everything from the ranch, to the neighbors, and the beauty of Wyoming, but doesn't mention her relationship with her husband much. I think that is where I can weave a beautiful love tale, and use her letters as the background of the story.

I have to wonder why I hardly chose to write when I lived with Cowboy, for months I really had nothing to fill my days except his laundry and what I was going to make him for dinner. I feel lost on what my future is after my bird job, but I will still have half of the summer to explore Wyoming and maybe make a home for myself up here before the ice covers the highways trapping me inside the state for the winter.