Taking a Chance on Dreams

I had lunch with a friend recently. She has quit her job in order to paint and she is scared she is not going to make it. She’s painted all her life while working but she is the sort of person who gives herself fully to anything she does and her job demanded a lot of her — so the painting suffered. Now she has come to the point where she either gives herself to her painting or give up her dream. That’s a brutal prospect.

This is a thing I relate to because three years ago, after losing my brother, I realized that some people never get that luminous “someday” that glimmers on the horizon of true dreamers. I was always going to write for real someday. Oh, I wrote here and there, a few magazine articles, some newspaper columns, I puttered around with my first novel but I worked 9 hour days and commuted another 2-2½ which didn’t leave me with much creative energy left.

Here is the thing about dreams, I believe that they have a life of their own and, like a neglected spouse, there comes a point where they give up and move on to someone who will appreciate them. They flutter on the edge of madness but the soul and the heart don’t respond like the brain does.

All this talk the last few days of corporate downfalls and all the gloomy political bickering going on has been eating away at me and I know I am losing energy because of it. I thought about writing about the Steelers today. At least that made me happy. But the truth is I haven’t paid attention to the Steelers or any other football team in years — not since the glory days in the Seventies when I had a mad crush on Franco Harris, fellow Penn Stater. That was a great team, not to mention the cutest team I ever remember. But I was young then and cuteness meant a lot more than it does now.

But dreams.... you have to have faith in them and nurture them. Without that you might as well just get the job, make the money, buy the stuff, march in step.

Over the past three years I’ve learned a lot. I’ve risked a lot and sometimes that frightens me but the writing has been good and I’ve learned so much about publishing and being a better writer and helping myself as well as others move toward those dreams. They say that when you take a step toward God that God takes a thousand steps toward you. I’ve seen signs of that, too. Wonderful people have come into my life and I believe that angels sometimes take human form.

Betty Lou and I kept our Tuesday night pizza date last night. It was just the two of us this time which I love because we talk about the craziest things — Harry Potter, and the artists and writers we admire, and what men we think would be worth falling in love with. BL said she was thinking about what title she would want if she could have a title and she decided she liked the sound of the word “Dowager”. “I looked it up,” she told me, “it means an elegant older woman of great dignity and worth.” It is a good name for her.

I thought about it and finally said the word I’d most love to be able to claim is “mentor”. I think that is a beautiful word. BL was one of my mentors, one of the greatest. She taught me to paint, she encouraged me to write, she just about tricked me into joining the board of the art association. She is one of the best things that ever happened to me. She continues to give me permission to follow dreams.

Sometimes I get scared. The world is often too much with me and I’m afraid of getting so lost in the demands of daily life that I’ll lose faith in the dream. And if I lose faith, how will I make the dream happen? But I have BL and I have faith in showing up at the page and those are good things to hold to.

Thanks for reading.