A dream come true, and the salt finally out of the wound

When one of my life loves left me, he set a card on my keyboard. In it, was $400 in $20s to cover the last month of rent he owed me and a note about how he knew he'd see my name published in Cosmo one day when one of my stories made it in there.

I was a newspaper reporter, but my real dream was to see my name in a magazine. I've always loved magazines. I think I got it from my mom buying People, The National Enquirer and Woman's World every time we reached the cash at the grocery store. I loved and still love People. But I also buy and read the crappy In Touchs to Vanity Fair to Men's Health - which is so much better than Women's Health. Women get the stories on lip gloss and shoes and the men get the pieces on abs.

I got that card around seven years ago. Or was it six? Eight? (Funny how one breakup feels like your death at the time and now I can't pinpoint the year).

For some reason, a part of me was always bothered that I hadn't made it into a magazine. It's fair to say that I stayed in my safe "smaller town newspaper place" - I was a big fish in a small pond. I gave up a gig at a big paper for my family. But then I also had a baby and took a year off writing completely and then I got laid off, which was completely soul destroying, humiliating and degrading.

Then, I switched careers and started doing radio.

It looked like I'd never make it into a magazine.

And then I found Canadian Running magazine. I'm a reluctant runner. I've done two half marathons, a couple of 8Ks, a 10 and other little runs. I take running classes and run at the gym, but it's a challenge because I have asthma from years of smoking. Any info I can get on how to make a run easier I want. I turned to the magazine and enjoyed the fact it's all Canadian, with info on Canadian runs, marathons and personalities.

I shot off an email to the editor and said I'd be available to write if he ever needed a running writer or a writing runner...

The January and February 2010 Canadian Running has my first magazine piece, a profile on a Quebec running club. I grabbed it out of my mailbox when it got here and did a little dance in my kitchen.

It was a little dream come true - even if it wasn't Cosmo.