Taking Action

Every morning I journal for about fifteen minutes, filling three legal pad pages with my thoughts, hopes, dreams, complaints, and ideas.  It started about twenty-five years ago with Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, which was the only text ‘assigned’ in a class I was taking to learn how to be more open with how I lived my life, and who I was. Those last two would take a lot of time, way beyond that class and those people, but eventually I began to live the way I thought and felt.  That aside, deciding to take action in the form of a class, as well as committing to developing a habit of writing every day, was the first time I really said to myself that ‘things’ were not working with what was in place, so it was time to replace the current behaviors with those that might put me closer to where I wanted to be.  Wherever that was…. While I would eventually figure where and what ‘that’ was, taking action was the key to so many new worlds.

That action, the first I’d taken since college graduation, insofar as helping myself was concerned, was the key. I began to meet new people, people more aligned with how I was thinking, of thinking many of the same things, or at least in the same way I was, and it was exhilarating. People who were a part of my being stuck began to drift away, which was alarming at first, but then I saw that we were helping each other stay ‘stuck’ and that when one of us began to make changes to go in different directions, the reasons we were together started to fray and eventually we went our separate ways. Which was good. New starts, taking action, and deciding what you really want, and are willing to work for, perhaps only for now, are one of the paths to realizing the life you’ve dreamed.  And sometimes, it is very different from the one you thought was your goal in the past.

Two years ago, I was laid off from a ‘Golden Handcuffs’ job, and promptly sought to recreate it. And I did, in a way, and the new one was worse, in different ways, and so I moved on, taking a step back in both position and compensation, to give myself time to clear my head, to read and write, and to discern the direction I needed to take in my life.  Each little intentional action I took during this period led to new knowledge and the realization that what I was doing now was preparing me to go in the direction I have always wanted to go, but didn’t know how. The means to another end. And the bonus is that each decision I make, whether the goal pans out or not, is leading me closer. I step forward, and learn things I need to know.  See things I need to see. New people offer to help with something I’ve been struggling to complete. And each day I gain new insight into what I know I have to do to keep stretching and growing as both a person and an artist.

What dormant dreams are in your life? And is there something you could do—big or small—to begin exploring that possibility?