A while back, I laughed when I first heard of a self-discovery exercise — write your own obituary.      How silly, I thought at the time. However, as 40 looms a decade after my hairdresser knew for sure that gray hair had set up housekeeping, I reconsidered this odd assignment.      Its purpose is to examine where you’ve been, how you got there, or where you got sidetracked. You can also discover how your life’s goals have been altered or matured. You can see how your life has influenced others and the legacy you have created for yourself. And you can decide what there is still time to do.      And where do I begin …      I was born on Donald Duck’s 24th birthday, the same day my dad turned 23 and my grandpa turned 46. I would be my parents’ only child, growing up in an Indiana town, down the street from a hospital. And it was a good thing with all the trips I made to the emergency room … broken bones, legs caught in car doors, etc.       Encouraged by my mother, I was an avid reader and fell in love with writing as soon as I could chew on an eraser. I hated dolls and was irate when I won a Barbie doll in a contest instead of the red wagon I longed for. I was a die-hard baseball fan and the softball diamond beckoned me early and often. Nothing could keep me from playing, not even the day I wore my first pair of panty hose to school. With my skirt flying in the dirt, I slid into home plate for the winning run … and all the runs in my hose equaled more than both teams’ scores combined.      Writing was my life all those years growing up. The music of the 60’s and 70’s nurtured me as I spun my 45’s into scratchy oblivion and filled reams of lined school paper. I entertained classmates with silly poems and serious prose until discovering the joys and more stable job potential of newspaper reporting and feature writing. I vowed I would write the great American novel one day.      I had a few regrets during those high school and college years. I wish I had gotten a girls bike instead of a boys and avoided a few crashes that would ruin my knees for life. I also wish I hadn’t been chicken and had taken tougher classes, truly challenged myself and not been afraid to try something beyond my self-imposed safety net of writing and journalism.      But I do not regret marrying the only boy I ever dated, the one who ran home that first day he saw me and told his mother he had met the girl he was going to marry. Call it love, call it instinct, I knew he would be the only one I could share my life with.  Though we had no roadmap as a young couple out of college, I knew he and I could negotiate the turns of life together. I do not regret moving from the comfort of back home in Indiana, a song that still leaves me weepy at the start of every Indy 500.       And I’m glad I took the time to seriously consider having a child, a prospect that terrified me, the woman who hated babysitting. With great joy, I learned over time why God decided to give me a boy instead of the girl I had so desperately wanted. My son gives me the shoulder to cry on when I’m proud of him beyond words, the courage to pull strength from deep within both of us when we need it in solitude or together.      I paid my writing dues in nearly a dozen years of newspaper work, and have recently rediscovered the creative writing that sustained me as a child.       My epitaph? Well, it goes something like this:      Monica Vest Wheeler was clumsy, yet very cautious. She was afraid, yet very curious. She was strong, yet stubborn. She made mistakes and agognized over every one of them. She realized too late some of her strengths and weaknesses.       She was a compulsive rocker and always bounced her knees. She cried during sad movies, yet watched them over and over. She had the one great love of her life and gave birth to a son who enriched her. She had a family that supported her and loved her and laughed with her. She had wonderful friends who inspired her, who tolerated her quirky habits, who listened when she was brave enough to speak. She learned to appreciate life more with every day.      She wanted nothing more than to touch people with her words, and she never gave up trying to write the great American novel. She had dreams to fulfill.      My life’s story summarized in less than five minutes. Parts of it make me wince, others provoke a chuckle. Yet, it all provides a lesson: You cannot go back, but you can and should reflect on your past. The direction of our lives needs tweaking periodically. We may be surprised the twists life can take.      Though as morbid as it sounds, write your obituary. Remember we still have time to fulfill those dreams. Let them say, “she did,” not “she wanted to.”       All this from a woman who hated dolls but loves being a mother.