Ever wonder what dreams are made of?
Fireflies.
They’ve been strolling out of the creek and weaving between trees this path month. After a long day’s work on house projects or refusing to mulch another tree, those lighted bugs set the atmosphere that things are good.
Living the dream.
But there’s also a sense of what’s around the corner, of what’s to come.
I was stepping out of the shower one night, peering into the dark kitchen and saw my cat Elsa staring at something. Or maybe she was just thinking about food.
But then she reached her paw into the darkness and swatted something down, and it glowed.
She had snatched a wayward firefly.
Not wanting it to be her next meal, I scooped it in a jar and let it free outside the front door, where it could continue to light up the night. Elsa could go search for other bugs to eat. She’d been doing a good job killing the occasional spider that had been sneaking into the house.
She hustles for her dreams.
I thought about Elsa peering into the void, seeing nothing yet obtaining something. Isn’t that what a goal is? Striving when other options fail, and stacking your failures to reach aspirations. How far would you stretch your hand out in the darkness to find that light?
I guess the next question is, how to keep going? How to continue to move forward in spite of failure?
This is what separates dreams and reality. The paper from the project. It’s easy to write up plans but it can be hard to implement. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up with an idea that seemed easy to do, but execution took longer because of time and/or tangles.
But it all comes back down to the simple stuff, the things that again are easy to talk about but hard to do in practice: perseverance and motivation. Climbing not only the mountain, but also the valleys. Through the mud. Through the times of lack of support, of going through the latest failure; through the times of seasons changing and you have yet to make progress.
How far will you go to find that small light? That epiphany that will illuminate paths previously not available?
Elsa might have had her dream of delicious firefly feasting taken away, but she took it in stride and looked for more insects while waiting for the timed food bowl to deliver. Gotta work all the angles.
What will you do? Will you just stare into the darkness, plan on paper, only thinking about your dream but never acting? “Maybe someday,” you say.
Or will you reach out, try it on for size, and see what happens? Failure is inevitable, but sometimes, when you tweak them just right, those failures can fold into success.
After all, you don’t generally find opportunity sitting on the couch and eating potato chips.
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I write this post not only to inspire you readers, but also to let you know that I’ve been chasing a few dreams too. I’ve been busy, and haven’t had the time to write as many blogs as usual. Job-work, and project work has been taking up a lot of time, and when I do get free time, I’ve been spending it away from the computer, decompressing.
There are three paths before me currently: One, my two main projects will come to fruition and while it will be a whirlwind to get them off the ground once running, when the dust settles I will have more time to write;
Two, only one of my main projects will get completed and I will become busier than I am now, and will probably continue to write sporadically here;
Three, all projects fail, my job-work increases for a short time period, and then I should have more time to write if the load goes down.
I know, vague right? As things become more concrete I might reveal more details, but for now, know that I will still write on this blog, just probably not as often.
Stay persistent in your goals, dear readers.