Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today’s #trust30 prompt: “Write down one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how you will achieve that goal.”
I’m grateful to have lived many of my dreams. But for a creative like me, that darn “One Thing” is freakishly slippery. It’s always changing!
Here’s my list of dreams – the “One Thing” I cared most passionately – in order of remembrance:
Age 3. Save the Little Lost Lamb in the bedtime story. [Fail. Sobbed myself to sleep.]
Age 4. Make the best damn collage that’s ever been done in nursery school. [check!]
Age 5. Kill my baby sister Gina, because she’s so cute she takes all the attention away from me. [Fail. Thank goodness.]
Age 6. Rock out dancing to the Beatles (with sister Gina) until sick to my stomach. [check!]
Age 7. Chase the boys and kiss them at recess (just the cute ones). [check!]
Age 8. Ride bikes with friends everyday, and feel the freedom flowing through my hair. [check!]
Age 9. Write the best damn report on the Pawnee Indian Tribe ever. [check!]
Age 10. Become tan, thin, and blonde. [fail!] Make money raking leaves with my BF and next-door crush and and buy everyone a Christmas present (even Gina). [check!]
Age 11. Survive moving to Worcester and being a chubby, friendless dork with glasses. [check!]
Age 12. Get the cool chicks to like me by drawing pictures of them kissing their crush. [check!]
Age 13. Sulk. A lot. Because we moved. Again. And our parents fight ’round the clock. [check!]
Age 14. Become cool and different and escape by hanging out with older kids and hippies. [check!]
Age 15. Become REALLY cool and different by dropping out of school and moving in with my much older boyfriend. [check!]
Age 16. Go back to school and get good grades while skipping class and other rebellious activities [check!]
Age 18. Graduate. Stay true to being cool and different by shunning great colleges that accepted me. [check!]
Age 19-22. Hang out, waitress, do a little singing, marry the older boyfriend. Why take on your life’s purpose until you are bored silly? [check]
Age 23-24. Go to community college. Make the best damn fake brochures ever. [check!]
Age 25-30. Get a real job as an artist. Make the best damn newspaper layouts and illustrations ever (while having a baby and getting divorced!) [check!]
Age 30-31. Get a job at Time Magazine in NYC. Make pretty good layouts (while swimming with sharks, flirting with future husband and visiting young son.) [check!]
Age 32. Work on feature films and video documentaries (until it becomes painfully clear those dreams don’t fit with a family). [check!]
Age 33. Move to Seattle area, following gut instincts, yay! [check!]
Age 34. Marry again, for Love [check!]
Age 35. Quit newspaper job to write first novel (while having another baby and teaching) [check!]
Age 36-49. Finish first novel, begin to heal old wounds, learn how to be in a family & community [check!]
Age 50. Sing and dance and write and love (while working to pay for the farm & renovation and not being workaholic). [check!]
Age 51. Learn all the parts of myself I’d been avoiding – even the ones I want to kill – and love them like a sister. [check!]
I turn 52 this Thursday. My One Thing Dream? Become all that I know I can be — grow up as a human being — and trust that it is indeed happening. [work–in-progress –! ]
Whew! What is your One Thing dream right now?
