Marie Connelly is not a Guru.

Fun fact: I cannot ride a bike.

See, I’m a Navy brat. And, like a lot of Navy brats my age, my father spent a decent portion of my early childhood years in the Middle East during the first Gulf War. Since those aren’t exactly the kinds of tours you can bring a young family along for, my mom, older sister and I remained state-side. Needless to say, as a working, essentially single-mom, my mother didn’t have a lot of time on her hands for things like bike lessons.

Still, bike riding abilities aside, I like to think I turned out okay. And I’d be a fool to think my parents didn’t have everything to do with that.

My father attended the Academy during Vietnam and was in the Navy for… well, however long they let you be in the Navy.  Despite retiring from active duty over ten years ago, he’s continued to find ways to serve the men and women in the armed forces in his day to day life.

His service has shaped our family in such a way that I truly cannot imagine what life would be like without it.

I’m grateful to my father for so many things, but on Veteran’s Day in particular, I’m grateful for his service to our country and to those that continue to serve.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that to be a military wife is no easy thing – I’m grateful to my mother, a Navy ROTC member herself, who always found a way to make that life our own.

While my father is my favorite veteran, I believe that all servicemen and women deserve our thanks and support today.

I’d encourage you to visit returnthefavor.org to find ways that you can do just that. If you’re able, please join me in making a donation to the VFW Foundation and help them reach their goal of $111,000 for November.  You can donate here.

When I started first grade, I didn’t know how to read.

My parents were a little bit concerned, especially since my older sister had been reading at some prodigious age. It’s funny now that I have a degree in English under my belt, but at the time, none of us were particularly thrilled about the situation.

My mom asked my teacher what was wrong, and she said, “Marie won’t learn to read until she knows how to read.”

I know. My poor mother, right?

What my teacher had noticed was that I wouldn’t start reading a sentence unless I recognized all the words coming up. I didn’t want to get halfway through something and then stumble. Not knowing one word cast doubt on all the others – what if I didn’t actually know any of them at all?

To be honest, I’m still a bit like that. I didn’t want to start this blog without the right font, without a bio page, a good blog roll, Disqus comments enabled, all the great features I see on the blogs I love and read religiously.

The truth is that those are all very reasonable sounding excuses to put off writing, to avoiding stumbling or putting my foot in my mouth. I can truly sympathize with organizations who are still struggling to get involved in social media – what if they move the goal posts and change the rules on us? What if we say something and we can’t take it back? What if we screw up?

I guess the challenge is to accept the good, and stop worrying so much about perfection (thanks, Voltaire). The push I needed was National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo, for…short?). I know that if I have to write something gasp every day, I’ll force myself to let go of all those “what if’s” and just get on with things.

Here’s hoping I don’t put my foot in it too much.