What Do You Need to Pursue a Dream?
What do you need to pursue a dream? What is holding you back? What needs to change for the conditions to be ideal?
Huge chunks of time on the calendar? More money? For the kids to be older? Younger? Out of the house? Or…fill in the blank?
Or is it you? Do you need to be older? Younger? Prettier? More trained? Or … fill in the blank?
I was thinking about dreams as I was painting the walls of my just-married daughter's room this week. For the first time in my life (including 27 years in this house), I will have an office. And although other family members will have access to the computer in the room, I still refer to the room as MY office, a fact that my husband teases me about, but since he already has TWO offices - one at the church and one at City Hall, how many more offices does he need?
But I digress. As I rolled Spring Walk green paint onto the walls, covering childhood penguins and young girl memories, I thought of my office-less years where I had a desk crammed into the corner of our bedroom, or worked on the kitchen table, from boxes and files stashed and stored in all corners of the house, a house with no garage and no basement (typical of older desert homes in our area),
yet, during that time, I have been a worship leader, preschool music teacher, scrapbooker, family accountant, church productions and summer music festival director and lately, a writer.
What do you need to pursue a dream?
All you need is a corner to call your own. Even if that corner moves and you have to pack it up and take it out the next day. All you need is a corner.
Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella
"In my own little corner
in my own little chair
I can be whatever I want to be. - Cinderella in the Rodgers and Hammerstein movie, Cinderella.
Back in my childhood days before DVD's and Netflix and pre-recorded shows, there were certain specials that were played annually on TV, including The Wizard of Oz, The Ten Commandments and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. I would gather around the television set with my sisters, brother and parents and watch Lesley Ann Warren, as Cinderella, sing about how her imagination could take her from her corner to anywhere else in the world.
Maybe it was at that point, I began to believe in the power of a corner.
Although, I guess to be honest, Cinderella ultimately needed a few fat mice, some pumpkins and a fairy godmother to fulfill her dreams. Oh yeah. And a prince. Which makes me wonder--am I seeing my office as a fairy godmother in regard to writing? That will get me to my prince....I mean, my novel done? Possibly.
I am hoping I remember that I got an awful lot done with just a corner.
Where is your corner? Where do you create and dream? Do you have a specific place or is it transient?
What is one simple step you can make today to pursue your dream?