What Does It Feel Like When Your Dreams Come True?

And will you recognize it when it happens?

It sounds like a really lame question, doesn't it? You're like, "Well, duh, Ricë. It feels like your dreams have come true. What idiot doesn't know that?"

Except you wouldn't put the two dots over the e because even though you know how to do that, remembering isn't a top priority in your busy life and why don't I just change my name to Sally or something easy, for crying out loud? Why make things more difficult than they already are? Is what you're asking. I don't blame you. Sometimes I wonder the exact same thing. I wonder if Cher would lend me her name, do you think?

Anyway. It's not as lame a question as it might at first seem. I'm not a big dreamer. I don't daydream, and I've never kept lists of things I wish would someday happen. You know, like
~~spend a month in Paris. For free.
~~go up in the space shuttle before it's too late
~~get invited to an inaugural ball at the White House, but not one for someone who makes you whimper in fear
~~look like (fill in name of your favorite lithe/tanned/toned/taut/perky young thing)
~~be so rich I'm embarrassed by it

Like that. I've never done that, because not only do I not care much about what happened in the past ("past" here meaning anything before I woke up today), I also don't care a lot about what happens in the future. I mean, I *do* care, in the sense that I don't want to get blown up or swept away by a tornado or--the most likely scenario--dehydrated and fried by the sun. So, yeah, I care about what happens to me and those I love, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about things I wish would happen. Dreams, goals, objectives--however you think of it. I focus on deadlines and things I need to do and spend little time dreaming.

When I was growing up, the one dream I had, other than making it through childhood without getting beat up for being The Weird New Kid, was: to grow up and have a boyfriend. Yeah, I know: it makes the feminist in me cringe. But there you go: I was a romantic, and having a boyfriend with whom to walk on the beach seemed the ultimate in romance. Plus it seemed that kissing might someday be something fun to do, but it seemed as if it might not be something you could do by yourself.

I do sometimes come up with something that seems like, gee, it would really be nice if that would happen. If, you know, I could figure out a way to make that work. For instance, back when I had been subbing for over a dozen years and was getting kind of tired of being called "bitch" almost every day, I thought, "You know, if I could figure out a way to make X amount of money every month, I could give this up." I was writing and stuff, sure--but that's not a guaranteed income. You never know. You can't count on how much you're going to make or if it will show up in a timely manner or any of that. If you need to have a steady income to, you know, pay bills and buy gas, you need something dependable. I didn't know of any way to guarantee that, though, so I kept on subbing.

And then my mother died, and after her estate was settled, it turns out that that exact tiny little amount will be transferred into my checking account until I'm almost 70, and then 2/3 of that will keep appearing every month from then until I die.

It's a very small amount, and there's no fanfare, and you know, it took me a while to realize that this was a kind of Dream Come True. You know what they say about being careful for what you wish for, because getting money because someone you love dies is really not the way you want it to go. It makes people like me just the teeniest bit leery of having dreams.

Stay with me--other examples are more cheerful, I promise.

After I heard about Artfest, I thought about how, gee, I'd like to go someday. I'd even *fly* to go, and you know I'm no fan of the flying. One day, years later, Teesha called me and invited me to submit a proposal to teach. I immediately went into high gear, coming up with a project and a proposal and photographs, and then getting there and teaching. It was fabulous and it was fun, but I never took time to sit down and go, "Ahhhhh. A Dream Come True" or to realize an actual dream-ish kind of thing had actually happened, until much later. Recently, in fact.

Before I started writing for Rubberstampmadness in 1991, I'd been submitting stuff for years and years--mostly poetry to snooty poetry magazines, but still. So when I got that first gig, it didn't feel like a dream coming true but like I finally figured out a niche, since Poetry Magazine obviously wasn't going to be it.

In all these cases, and in every other one I can think of, I had a vague notion that I'd like to do something. I'd talk about it, maybe, maybe write it in my notebook. I might think of ways it might come to pass, thinking about it while I was in the shower or out walking (in the Pre-Dog-Bite Days; now I just think about trying not to piss off any more dogs), but I never Made Plans. I know I should do that--people who make step-by-step plans seem to have a lot of success.

But so have I. When I stop and look back at it, I realize that just about everything I've ever said I wanted to do, I've done, with the exception of going on Oprah to talk about living the creative life. I didn't do that. It wouldn't have worked out, anyway, because I never actually watched Oprah and so had no clue about what her audience was like or the format of her show. I would have had to go to some sort of remedial workshop so I'd have a clue about the people to whom I'd be addressing whatever it was I was going to say. Plus I didn't have anything to wear, I'm sure. And they would have insisted on putting that make-up stuff on my face, and that would have made me hyperventilate--the idea of thick creamy stuff plastered on my cheeks and forehead makes me itch. Literally. I itch right now. So probably a bad idea all the way around. I would have wanted to do a style makeover on Oprah, and she would have had The Big Guys escort me off the set.

I've had the vague idea, on and off, that I want to write a novel. I've started several. Some have had hundreds of pages. But at some point, I begin to bore myself, and then I can't figure out where to go and realize maybe I should have had some sort of outline, and then I start having flashbacks to graduate school research papers and *their* outlines, which were just The Worst, and I get all shuddery and my eye starts twitching because, honeys, if I were going to go through that stuff again, I would have just gone on for the PhD. If I'm going to have to outline something, I'd better have a really good reason for doing it.

In the last couple of years, I've been trying to think if there's anything I want to do that I haven't done yet, things that fall in line with My Purpose in Life, which is to encourage creativity and foster inspiration and spread the word about the creative life. That stuff.

First I thought how great it would be if someone gave me a platform for a blog that would reach more people than my own, a place where I could write regularly about creativity and, you know, get paid. Because, frankly, that's the only way I can make time for something is if it's a paying gig. If I'm getting paid to do something, I'll figure out how to ditch something else I'm already doing in order to make time for it. I also was thinking, at the same time, how great it would be if someone paid me to do the podcasts and gave me a wider outlet for those. They're more than just a little labor intensive, and while I love doing them, the amount of work required made me not so eager to do them as often as I dreamed of.

And then CreateMixedMedia came along, and I was invited aboard, and, man, we all got to work. It was a ton of work, getting everything ready to go, formatting and uploading and figuring out new ways of doing stuff, and months went by and suddenly I went, "Hey! This is what I dreamed of doing!" And I stopped and thought, "OK, so what else is there you'd like to do?" And the only thing--the ONLY thing--that came to mind was this:

I'd like to travel with The EGE and talk to groups of people about creativity, and I'd like to moderate panel discussions with creative people, where the audience gets to ask questions and everybody talks about creativity just like it's a really important thing, which it is. I want to reach lots of people, and I want to be an example to them about how you can live a creative life.

And so I put it out there and then kind of forgot about it, and here's the really funny part:
when the invitations first arrived, I was all like, "Man, that's a ton of work. I'd have to fly, and I'd have to go through airport security and be hassled by people in uniform about my jewelry, and I'd have to eat strange food and Make Lots of Plans, and, gee, I feel kind of like I need to go lie down, just thinking about it."

And then, in the middle of trying to decide whether or not to accept these invitations, one day I woke up--in the Buddhist sense of waking up, not in the stayed-in-bed-too-long sense--and smacked myself in the forehead and went, "You dolt. This isn't a ton of work being handed to you; this is a Dream Coming True." Because you know what? I'd almost missed that. Here I'd put this idea out there, something I want to do and think is important, but because it didn't arrive in the way I imagined it would arrive (and I'm not sure how that was--maybe by Pony Express in a gold-embossed envelope with a wax seal and a check inside), I didn't recognize it as a dream.

That's the problem. We have dreams, and maybe they come true a lot more often than we realize because we're not looking for them to arrive in a plain brown box, or we're not expecting them on a Tuesday afternoon or by email or from a stranger. Everything we've read and seen about other people's dreams coming true makes us expect there'll be fanfare and balloons and the crew from that show, the ones who drive up on your lawn, with  squealing and the keys to a Brand New Car!! and people hugging us and whirling us around and saying how lucky we are.

It's kind of like the rest of life: it never looks quite like we imagined it would. You dream of a boyfriend with whom to walk along the beach, and 20 years later you wake up, and there you are with your man, trudging through the sand along the lake, helping him look for his sunglasses, the ones that fell off when he was playing frisbee with the dog. You take his hand so neither of you will stumble in the twilight and you look over at him and realize: here you are. Walking on the beach with your boyfriend. It's not sunny, and there's no ocean or puffy clouds. You're not wearing a bikini (thankyoujesus), and he doesn't have a surfboard. If you're lucky, you'll stop for a second and realize this is your dream, and you'll go, "Huh. Who knew?" If you're really lucky, you'll add, "And I was right about the kissing."