Life Is Always Messier Than Our Dreams
In our dreams, life is so smooth. We dream of getting a call from a publisher saying they want to publish your book, and we imagine our silly celebration dance and holding the book in your hands for the first time.
We dream of marching into our boss’s office and handing in our notice, and imagine how empowering it would feel. We dream of renting a cabin in the woods to work on a collection of art, and we imagine how we spend our days quietly submerged in creativity and nature.
But when we turn those dreams into reality, it might not look like that.
Reality might look like a publisher contacting you to say that they’re maybe interested in your book, but they want some changes. And your initial elation turns into perfectionism when trying to get it right, and then grief when the publisher ends up turning your book down after all.
Reality could be that you lose sleep over the decision to quit your job, and when you finally hand in your notice the only thing you feel is anxiety and a weird sort of guilt for not staying.
Reality might look like your cabin being cold and drafty, and you hear weird sounds in the night making you suddenly afraid of the dark forest outside your window. Your creative retreat ends up feeling lonely and your art collection doesn’t turn out as you hoped.
When I dreamed of the first week of my leap to take my creative business full-time, I imagined feeling that excited anticipation of something new. I imagined my days being beautiful creative days, the spring sun shining in through the window.
I did not dream of feeling anxious in the days leading up to my leap. I did not imagine getting a cold just as I began, making me feel pretty fatigued and unmotivated that first week. I did not expect it would be snowing and too cold to have my tea outside and that I’d feel a bit disoriented in my new weekly habits.
When we dream of life-changes and creative ideas, we forget that life is still life, and it’s always gonna be messy.
So when reality comes, and it doesn’t look like what we dreamed of, we might feel like we’re doing something wrong. We may start wondering if we dreamed of the wrong thing, if we made a bad choice or if maybe we’re incapable of doing what we have wanted for so long.
But what we’re missing if we hold onto the expectations of our dreams too tightly is the beauty within our messy reality.
We might miss how valuable the feedback from the publisher is, and how even if that particular deal slipped through your fingers, the experience will ultimately make you a better writer.
We might miss the quiet determination behind us quitting that job even when it felt so uncomfortable, and how you show up for yourself and what you want even when it’s hard.
We might miss the little squirrel outside the cabin that seems just as skittish as you feel, and how the art you create at your lonely retreat isn’t what you imagined but something different, better perhaps, tapping into a side of your art you didn’t know was there.
A week into my leap, the ground outside was wet from rain and the air chilly but fresh. I stood by the window, a hot cup of tea cradled in my hands and looked up at the sky. Just like the dark clouds were parting to let out a ray of sunshine, I felt how the brain fog from my cold had lifted. I thought about the blog post I had just written, and the photos I might take to go along with it, and about an email I had gotten from an artist telling me about her ideas and plans and what I would reply to encourage her.
And I smiled and thought hey, this is my life now. Messy and beautiful and real, and it’s better than any flawless dream.
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