July 2019 Quote: Dream On

I have a dream
It burns with a passion
It brings me happiness beyond comparison
It’s something I genuinely love
But it feels like a literal dream.
Where no one knows it but you.
It feels so hard to have this dream and not be able to tell other people your inner most heart desires because I know deep down they won’t understand the
Passion
The happiness
The genuine love it brings me.
It feels so hard to tell people
That I have a dream.
But I’ve been working on my dream for so long  By myself
Rooting for me
Cheering for me on the side lines
Telling myself one day
Just you wait . . .
One day
I will look back on all the people
Who I tried to let in on my dreams,
All the people who didn’t know my dreams,
And I’ll see how all of it was worth it
To accomplish
My wildest dream.
– To the dreamers

– floweringpages

To the dreamers indeed,

I bet we’ve all heard Martin Luther King Jr. say he had a dream. I bet we all have a dream. Maybe it isn’t as sanctimonious as what MLK Jr. dreamt of, but with good intention, all our dreams are valid whether it be an artist, an engineer, an actor, a chef, a vet, a doctor, a zoo keeper, or a writer. All your dreams are worth dreaming about.

All your dreams are worth striving towards and making them a reality.

Someone once told me that a dream is only a dream until you make it a goal. They said that dreams are called dreams because you envision it in your mind and you think about all the endless possibilities and happy scenarios where you accomplish this dream. And much like a dream, it stays in your head. A dream only becomes a goal if you take all that you envision and apply it to real life to actually achieve it. It’s your ability to step out of your head and into reality to make that dream come true. When you take that first step, and every step, leap, jump, or cartwheel after that, you are making your dream a goal—-something more than you live in your head about.

For so long, I’ve had a dream.

If you’ve been following my writing updates, my dream was to write a book. For so long, it was always about me being able to write something in completion. When I was younger I would always write short stories from the most ridiculous things to the most weirdest things that even I look back on and think what was I thinking? I wrote Hello Kitty crossovers, stories to my teachers about a girl that went to Watermelon Elementary School and made a best friend, I wrote stories about a mouse who committed murder, and I wrote stories about sleepovers. I just loved to create and to write. As I grew older, that passion never faded away. It was natural that I would want to write a book. I would sit in front of my computer, much as I am doing write now, and type away, trying to make a coherent story out of nothing. I had no outline. I had no character overview. I had no idea what I was doing.

But I was happy.

That was the most important thing.

Until that happiness turned to dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction turned to fear. I would look at what I wrote as a moody teenager who thought the world hated her because she hated herself, and I would feel completely repulsed by what I wrote, thinking that no one in their right mind would read this story or how I would never completely write a book one day. It was beyond hard to figure that out.

But it didn’t mean I didn’t like writing. I just wasn’t in the best place to write a full story because I had to figure things out for myself.

And I have.

And last year, I wrote my first completed story.

Is it a profoundly moving story?

Far from it.

Is it a good story?

I like to think so.

Is it complete?

Yes, it is.

I remember the idea came to me when a door closed in my life and I felt like I never got the story I wanted from it—when I never got closure from it. So to change the narrative, I wrote my own story. This time I wrote an outline. I vaguely knew my characters. I kind of knew what I was doing. I didn’t stick to my outline, but I would dedicate two hours each night to write and work on making my dream come true. There was days I would finish my writing session and feel completely eutrophic. However, there were days I would finish my writing session and feel frustrated with myself, hating my writing again. There was so many times I wanted to stop writing because my writing wasn’t good enough. There were so many times I wanted to talk to someone about a plot or what I should do. There were so many thing—there are so many things—that I felt.

But I wrote on.

I figured it out.

But it was hard to do it by myself. And I guess this is the point of this whole post, is that sometimes you have these dreams that seem like you can never do it and you feel like no one supports you or believes in you to do it, so you support yourself to get you through it. Speaking from personal experience, I will tell you it’s the worst feeling you can feel: unsupported.

It feels like you have this million piece puzzle and you want to figure it out and you slowly tackle the puzzle by yourself, but it’s so hard to fully complete it because there’s no one there with you to help you piece it together. So it takes you a while to think how you can do it on your own. Some days you feel the sense of emptiness and loss of motivation, and other days you have a break through and see how things are coming together. But most days, you wish someone were there to make it easier to do.

If you ever felt like that, I hope you know you’re not alone. That I’m here with you, cheering you on, screaming at you from the sidelines that YOU CAN DO IT!!!! I hope you know that whatever your good intentioned dream is, that it takes hard work, passion, dedication, and resilience, but it also takes support. I mean, you can’t go zip lining without a little bit of support there to make sure you don’t fall.

I hope that you keep working towards what you love and what brings you immense joy and know that if someone doesn’t support you on that, then it’s their loss because they’re not going to be there for the incredible journey that you’re about to embark on. They’re going to miss out on all the high-highs you have from your success and the low-lows you have from your failures. They’re not going to be there to pick you back up, when you pick yourself up and witness the strength you have within. They’re going to miss it all because you’re doing it. You’re working on you for you. And that’s all anyone should ask of you and anyone should support.

Trust me, it’s not always going to feel good being alone in your dreams. It’s not. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to open up to some people about what I want to do and have them brush it off like I never said anything. Or how many times I felt like the people in my life wouldn’t care about my dreams because they would think it silly. I guess in some ways I need to stop assuming that those people wouldn’t care if I never open up to give them a chance to care. But I’m only human and it’s hard to be vulnerable and let people in. I think I have to challenge myself though to make that effort. Maybe you feel the same way I do and need to open up to more people about your dream before assuming. We’ll grow together.

And that’s the beautiful thing. No matter the dream we have, we have a commonality: we have a dream we want to make goals. We might not have a whole lot of people who support or believe us on that dream, but we can be there for each other to believe in each other when we need it. So let’s be believers and dreamers of each other.

What’s your dream? Do you feel like the people in your life support you on it or are you scared that they won’t? Are you nervous to accomplish your dream? Let’s create a positive and supportive conversation in the comments 💕

I hope no matter where you are in life—-a dreamer or on your journey—I hope that you know that I’m there right with you believing in your ability to do amazing, wonderful things.

And as always, with love,