Day 3 - Dreams - 30 days of Gratitude - in pictures

I had many dreams of what I would be when I was growing up. One was being a decorator. I would even make doll house out of cardboard boxes, creating walls, doorways and windows, making sure the floor plan was usable. I would draw furniture in each of the rooms. My sister would then ask for the finished product so she could play with it with her dolls. Pretty much the only time in our young lives I didn't care she wanted something that was mine (such are the feelings of an older sister). I gladly gave them to her, because the joy was in the designing. I wanted to go to an art school to study interior design, but my father insisted on a four-year liberal arts degree. I would be more marketable he thought.  He died after my first year of college, but I continued with his advice. Because, pleasing a dead man makes so much sense, no? I majored in creative writing and minored in history (completely and totally NOT marketable).   One of my other dreams was to be a writer. The problem was and still is, is that I'm mediocre at best and didn't have the discipline to make writing a career.  But let me tell ya, it was a fun major to have. I got married, worked job to job, not very fulfilled. Then had babies. 

Another dream -- being a mom. I love love being a mom. I love parenting. As much as I complain about it, I don't mind the numbing-tiredness that parenting can be at times. I love my children with all my heart and love the men they are becoming - metaphorical warts and all. When the kids were older, I needed to think of a career, one that would be fulfilling, one that would tap into the caring person my children taught me to be, one that would give back. I thought about teacher, because how much fun would it be to inspire kids to want to write and read and have wonderful discussion about great works and newly discovered authors. Yeah, I'm an idealist. I also thought about nursing. Nursing won out, I enjoy the science of health, I think the nursing ideal of loving care of those who are in need fits right in with my personality. It was hard, nursing school was hell (seriously, if Dante actually went to nursing school, this would be the closest ring to Satan himself). But it was all worth it.  Nursing was a newer dream, but one of the hardest to achieve and I'm proud of the work I've done to get here. I also get to add teaching back in as I volunteer to precept, speak at nursing schools, mentor and encourage new nurses. I also do a lot of patient teaching....so nursing was a great choice, even if I'm not discussing great works and encouraging writing (although, I do talk to patients about the books they have on their bedside tables and have had great discussions about books and authors).

I haven't given up my dreams on decorating and designing. I just use my own house as my canvas and once in awhile my friends will ask for my advice and I gladly and enthusiastically give it to them, sometimes with swatches. I, and I can't believe I'm admitting this, am starting to write a novel. I'm not sure how good it'll be, or what will come of it....but if I don't try, I'll never know.

That's the thing about dreams, the first step is the hardest, but once you take that first step you are that much closer at achieving whatever it is you dream.

Follow Your Dreams, Just Don’t Write About Them

I've been blogging, just not here on Zimmerhouse.  Here's why -- I've been nagging my husband about the lack of social media in his company this past summer and to shut me up he's letting me help them out -- for free -- wait, what? Free? Whatever, it's been fun. Here's one of the posts I wrote there. Because we all know how much fun I have making fun of myself:

One of the first lectures in my first Creative Writing class in college was to never write about your dreams. Well at least if you do write about them, don’t turn them into the class for a critique and certainly don’t send it as a story to the college literary magazine for possible publication.

Why?

Well, the professor said because we don’t always know what our dreams mean, or are aware of the symbolism because we’re so close to the dream.

I heard, blah blah blah. Because I was barely 20 years old and I knew everything (sigh, I wish I was still knew everything).

Here’s how I learned this particular lesson because I was too arrogant to actually listen to my professor.

I had a story due and had no idea what to write. I decided to sleep on it. I had this great dream that seemed to me like some awesome mysterious fable and I knew when I woke up this story was going to rock the world of my class (I know, I know, keep in mind, I was 20 at the time). I was pumped, I was energized and I wrote my heart out. It was a story about secret passages leading to a hidden cavern. The heroin died by drowning and every time someone entered the secret passage by canoe she haunted the cavern with her eerie moans. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I turn it in. No one says anything. Seriously, the lack of a response was disturbing. The professor did reiterate that it is a bad idea to write out our dreams so literally. I do believe she sighed afterwards.

They just didn't get it, but surely the crew at the literary magazine would, so I sent it to them.

When I didn't hear anything, I just assumed they didn’t get it either.

Because it couldn't have been my story...my brilliant story.

A few months later I was at a writing conference and saw a fellow student who also happened to be on the literary magazine committee. I asked him what was up about my story.

And he asks, “the one with the sexual imagery?”

A flood of images clouded my mind turning my cheeks bright red and I realized I just wrote surreal porn and shared it with my teacher, my fellow students, and the entire committee of the school’s literary magazine – truly a Freudian nightmare. In this case a canoe was -- well -- NOT just a canoe.

Not my proudest moment.

Dream journaling can be inspiring; can help you work things out; and can help you with images as dreams can be amazingly vivid. Dreams can help in writing and I would never discourage anyone from writing about them in.your.own.private.journals. But, like my very experienced and insightful professor from 20 plus years ago, I suggest that’s all you do and don’t write the dream out verbatim as a story.

The link to my post on BookFuel's blog: https://www.bookfuel.com/blog/2014/08/dreams-great-journal-not-good-your-story