Is my dream robbing me of joy?
Investigating the multi-layered paradox of dreaming big, gratitude, and being realistic (whatever that is).
To my great, joyful disbelief, here we are. I woke up early to write a letter that will arrive to you as soon as I successfully press “send” without accidentally scheduling this to be published on some other day (more challenging, for some, than you’d think). This has always been my work: to sit with the thoughts and feelings that swell and find a place to put them (the page, for instance). This has become, joyfully, my work: to share all my bafflement into the somewhat void, but not quite void because there you are, hopefully with a coffee or tea or some other comforting setup, maybe sneaking away in that specific Friday defiant way at the office, or maybe before you get ready for some glorious weekend plans, spending some time with me.
Soon, hopefully, I will get some good news, hopefully, that some fancy publishing people would like to publish the book that has been waiting to be published. Soon, hopefully, you who is reading this will hold that book in your hands, and then, hopefully, will love it in the way that makes you want to maybe tell a friend about it, or buy it for a friend for their birthday, or on a Tuesday, because they’ve been feeling, oh, many things, like loneliness or longing or not quite sure but it feels like a nameless storm. Hopefully they’ll love it too.
I haven’t known how to conduct myself in this season really. There has been sort-of-news-but-not-news since January. There have been “talks” and “Zoom calls” and emails and emails and emails. There have been drafts and essays and synopses and overviews. There have been ideas and a strange paralysis on what to do first, what to do next, what to do in the meantime. There have been a million pinch me moments already; my twenty year old self, moving to the city and working three jobs and hoping to make art that meant something and to make a life out of sharing all of my feelings would be absolutely thrilled.
It all could mean anything, resulting with landing anywhere on the spectrum between “absolutely nothing” and “Glennon Doyle might want to like, chat someday about all the Very Cool And Eclectic Things I’m doing with my Career. My Work.” She’ll love all the feely, deep, broody stuff. She’ll have questions about Dinner With Strangers. I’ll invite her and she will charmingly say dinner with anyone is her worst nightmare. We’ll laugh and laugh.
A current fear that I have is wondering if dreaming big, dreaming of the proverbial Glennon track as it were, is keeping me from whatever next good thing is coming - say every publisher we’ve emailed says, “This writer isn’t there yet.” Say they say, “We can’t see where this fits within the current market.” Or say I get a publishing deal, and it’s like, a very *cute* first introduction into the publishing world, an incredible, introductory step into the Official Publishing World, and Glennon doesn’t immediately call me: am I selling myself short for not manifesting the greatest, grandest, most successful outcome possible for this book, or am I setting myself up for disappointment by hoping for an outcome that very well not be how the story plays out for me?
I facilitated one of my four-week writing workshops in March, and Nicole Jasper-Lawless (find her Substack, Words Per Person, here), wrote a poem that has been rattling through my body ever since: In her poem, ‘yes, it’s still sap season,’ Nicole writes about the maple tree in her yard, the life the tree has lived, and wonders:
“I wonder what she hopes for.
Is it in her scope of things? Tall, steady, ever-expanding? Planter of trees? Giver of leaves and clean air and shade and sap and wood and symbol and resting place for weary me?
Does she wish for different things? Legs to take her somewhere else? A chance to be young and carefree?
Does she wish to stop standing so tall and solid, does she wish to lean?
Does she wish to pile her hair on her head and put on her dancing skirts and practice tree promiscuity?”
(read the full poem here).
These lines about hoping for something that is within our scope of things has stayed with me for months. If a tree dreams, does it dream of tree-things or dream of becoming something else? And when it comes to my own dreams, am I dreaming of things that are within my scope of things? Does it serve a tree to dream of becoming, say, a fish? Is it self-serving to dream for more than what may come?
All of these things are true: I am living my dream as long as I am making art on a regular basis - as long as I can access the place within myself that allows me to be true and honest and present with the world. And: I’d love to be able to sustain myself with my work in a much less precarious way. And: some days I want a quiet life. And: some days I think I’m destined for the Glennon track. All of it belongs.
I’m learning about the fluidity of hope: how it carries me, how it holds me on the days all of this feels precarious and impossibly slow and strange and wild and too far-reaching. How it changes shape day to day according to my need. How it reminds me to hold everything with open hands, ready to catch whatever lands, ready to let go whatever needs to be released.
Events This Month
In Good Company - Sunday, July 23rd at 10:30am - 12pm EST
Our next gathering of In Good Company (a monthly writing workshop) is going to be Sunday, July 23rd. We’ll be writing about the question: am I allowed to want this?
No need to register - a Zoom link will be sent out to paid Substack subscribers 24 hrs before.
The Collective Conversation - Tuesday, July 25th at 7pm - 9pm EST
This month for The Collective Conversation, we’re discussing the dreams you are carrying.
Register here for this event!