Today is the day that I quit allowing people or circumstances to squash my dreams. For far too long, I’ve allowed myself to use all sorts of excuses that have prevented me from being the kind of person that I want to be. Yeah, I said it…I’ve allowed this to happen to myself, I’ve allowed people to categorize me and compartmentalize me. But no more. No sir. A dream worth having, is worth fighting for…even if the person you’re fighting is yourself.
But where do I start? How to I put those dreamslayers on high alert? How do I make that first step in to saying, “Nuh uh, this girl has a dream, a purpose!” That’s how. I take the first step by saying it out loud so that the world can hear it. Then I slowly and meticulously start to believe it…like the little engine that could. You have to believe in yourself before anyone else can believe in you, right? If I can make that leap into self confidence, true self confidence, then no one or no circumstance can shake the dream. It will be like a fervor for water in a desert.
Then comes the move from self confidence into ACTION. Even the Bible says that faith without action is dead. Confidence without action, does nothing. It’s like a lightbulb screwed into a socket with no juice. It ain’t gonna light a room. I want to light that room. I want to quench that thirst. I will commit to baby steps toward my dream. I will write each and every day; 15 minutes–at a bare minimum each day–will be committed to finishing my novel. The dream will be the spark to keep me working toward finding a way to make it happen, even if I feel like I have three or four jobs. I will stop thinking that some big publisher is going to read a few of my blogs and roll out the red carpet for me. The ladder to my success won’t be straight and filled with right angles, it will be curvy and, at times, require me to pull out my rapelling gear.
With confidence and action comes perseverance. Oooooh, that’s the hardest. What happens when my 10 mile hike turns into a 500 mile journey across mountain, stream, river, volcano, bed of nails, etc??? I will have make the first baby steps toward that dream but then I’ll have to maintain those baby steps. To solve that dilemma, I’ll build my own cheerleading squad. It will be filled with the people who really love me and the people who want to see my dream to fruition. When I first told my husband that I wanted to write for a living, he casually said, “Have at it.” It was like I had told the cashier at the convenience store that I wanted to win the lottery. The “yeah, right” response. Since that time, however, he’s really come around to be my biggest supporter. I planted the seed of support, I let him know how important my dream was to me and he has grown to support me. Most of my friends know how important writing is to me but I’m going to make sure that they know and ask them for their support. I’m going to ask that when they see my persevearance waning that they lovingly redirect me towards that dream. And if it gets too bad, they can just whoop the ever loving crap out of me. Nonetheless, they will be on the sidelines keeping me on track and not letting me give up like I’ve done so many times before.
So now that I have self confidence, action, and perseverance, how do I battle the dreamslayers, the naysayers, the n’er do wells? I have the building blocks for my dream fortress and I’ll put on the armor of positive thinking to thwart attempts to destroy my dreams. Where there is a will, there is a way–despite what negative people have to say. No, I may not be the grammar queen. I may not be the punctuation princess. But, I’ll meet those dreamslayers with my infalliable power to look at their criticism from a positive perspective. Ok, so perhaps I could work on telling a more complete story at times and yes, I know that I use words that sometimes only Southerners can understand. I’ll do better. I’ll believe in my ability to do better. I’ll believe in my ability to be a writer that the world has not seen thus far.
So, dreamslayers beware. You can’t do to me what I’ve allowed you to do before. My dreams won’t be shaken. Not this time. The words that my mama spoke just a few weeks ago have propelled me into finishing what I have started. “You gotta hurry up and finish that book. I ain’t gonna live forever and I’d like to see it in print before I die.” My sweet daddy didn’t get to see it to fruition although he armed me with the tools to get there. He’ll be looking down from Heaven when I see, in print, the dedication in my first book–“To my loving parents, who cared enough for me to teach me how to fish and eat for a lifetime. I only hope that I can be a fraction of as good of a parent to my children as you were to me. And especially to my mother, who told me to tell my dreamslayers to beware.”
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