Yeah, even big dreamers can have them. Days or afternoons or mornings when everything just sort of…stinks. When carefully crafted plans crash and burn and maybe even the hard drive does too.

It can make you want to just sort of hide.

One thing’s sure – it definitely doesn’t make you want to get out a vision board and start dreaming about the New Year.

Yeah, who wants to dream big when you’re feeling small?

But maybe that’s the very best time to dream big.

It’s still there. The dream. Maybe even a few dreams. Tucked in that broken-down day, broken-down heart, broken-down plan.

Even amid the crazy-gone-wrongness.

You might have to look real hard to find them, but trust me – they’re still there.

And like all dreams, they’re waiting for you to notice.

 

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” (~Martin Luther King, Jr.)

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” (~C.S. Lewis)

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” (~Samuel Beckett)

 

I sit down to write because, yeah, that’s what I do. And I get a couple of paragraphs in and then it all just sort of…stinks. I could re-work. Probably should re-work. But I don’t. I just erase the whole lot of it.

Sometimes you just have to start over, but starting over can be mighty hard when you’re looking at a house that’s a mess and the thermometer’s still hanging out below zero where it has no place being.

So yeah, everything just sort of…stinks.

I kind of want to hide, truth be told. Kind of don’t want to nurture any dreams today. Kind of want to grab some covers and hunker down doing not much of anything.

And yes, there is a time for that – a time to relax and to restore and to refresh. But now isn’t the time for it because, well, running away is not really ever the answer, is it?

Hiding from your dreams because they’re hard to fan into flame doesn’t really ever help.

Dreams don’t put on skin by your hiding from them, and even though I don’t know the end, I really do trust the process even if it’s a hard process.

Is there ever an easy one?

I do what I know to do, which is to set aside the writing and set my sights on something else that will inspire creativity. This, I have learned, always works.

Set the manuscript aside and set up the easel.

Step away from the computer and step outside with a camera.

Stop writing and start singing.

Take a breather from the task-at-hand and bake some muffins or clean out a closet (yeah, that works too). Take a break, sip some tea, dance in the living room, dust the mantle.

Sure, and maybe even get out the vision board and dream up some dreams for the New Year.

~xo,
LuAnne