Brooke wrote this a million years ago. Well, okay, it was 2007. But her question is still valid today…where do you find yourself?

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When I was seven I wanted to be a poet. Mr. Shel Silverstein himself was the one who inspired me, and I took to allowing certain pages in my official-looking, red fake leather embossed journal for random rhyming sentences.

When I was 11 I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer. I had an autographed poster of Janet Evans tucked away in my desk. I missed my oldest brother’s mission farewell because I was at a nationals swim meet willing myself through the long course mile.

When I was 20 I wanted to get married. I was halfway through college and my parents were just a hair shy of making me sign a contract promising to graduate before I started popping out kids.

Their worry was for naught. I was in no rush to be a mommy. I had plans. Big ones.

Did you have plans, too?

I laugh at how easily my “plans” were quashed with the birth of my first child. But on crazy hectic days when the swarm of children seems more than I can bear, I still long for the fantasy fulfilled of a book written, a marathon completed officially, my old size 4 jeans on my body and not folded in the closet—accolades of some type, a reward that validates, something to remind me of me.

Emily sought herself out on Google, in an attempt to see if any of her accomplishments were, as she says, “Google-worthy.”  Read what happens here, and see how, through the birth of her beautiful babies, there was also the birth of a reluctant mother. She found herself on Google indeed, but more importantly she found herself.

And good for her.

But still. There is something intriguing about her attempt at entering herself in the search engine”¦

When I was 30 I wanted to find myself on Google. As it turns out, I don’t exist anywhere on Google. I have no bylines, no mentions, no quotes; my name is not one for the records or one that will live in cyberland infamy.

Nope, I just find myself on the computer. On the computer wasting time Googling myself while the shouts start up with fevered intensity— down the stairs, across the backyard, from the bunk bed. And the echoes of these strains course off the walls and into my heart. Two single syllables that seem more my right name than my given name ever was: “ma-ma!”

Take that, Google.

Can you find yourself on Google?

Where do you find yourself?