Impossible Dreams

6 days to 50. For the last decade or so my sisters and I write out goals for the next year on Christmas Eve. We go to church early and sit in the front while out mother gets ready to sing with the choir. This is the one and only time I go to church every year but I know it makes my mother happy. We have a lot of time before the actual mass starts so we've started a tradition of checking who won the lottery of life in the past year (who gets the most check marks on their list) and list out goals for the next year.

The photo above is from 2007. The first 2 entries, Write a book, and Make a Broadway Show of that book have been on most of my yearly lists, including my list for 2013. I was going through some old Moleskins looking for a bit of information and came across enough of these lists to see the pattern. Why have the top two things I've listed year after year been things I consider to be nearly impossible? I like to get check marks at the end of the year as much as the next person. Why have I been listing things that I don't think I can accomplish?

I also list easily achievable goals in these lists as well- like "buy a bike" (that took me 2 years), or "develop my underdeveloped deltoids"- my sister went through my workout routine with me and was appalled that I wasn't working on my deltoid muscles so this seemed like a very important goal- one that I easily checked off at the end of the year.

I was given permission to consider myself a writer in a class on Charles Dickens that I took in college. The professor was a little quirky. He thought college shouldn't be a fashion show so he wore exactly the same thing every day- jeans and a chambray shirt. I thought he was fantastic. We had to write papers for him on various Dickensonian topics. In the margins on one of these papers he wrote in red ink-

You are a great reader -maybe a great writer?

I was floored. I had never considered myself a writer and here was this strange man who I totally respected giving me permission to dream of something I didn't know I had wanted. With a few words and a red pen he changed my opinion of myself and my capabilities. Since then I've always known that I need to write a book.

The working titles of the books I'm supposed to be working on have changed drastically throughout the years. My first working title was "Mediocre Mexican" which was to be a hilarious expose of the trials and tribulations of waitressing in a Mexican restaurant. The next working title was "Sweet Tart Life-  Bittersweet Stories of Everyday Life." I have always collected stories. When I worked in restaurants I would write notes on little scraps of paper that I would stuff in a shoebox when I got home. When I became a designer I started carrying little notebooks everywhere and I would not only draw fashion details for work but I would make notes about stories for my future book.

I was in New York a few months ago and went to see Kinky Boots on Broadway. As a designer I always walk all around the theater looking at all the details in the architecture of the theaters themselves. Some of the theaters in New York are fantastic. I found myself in a stairwell off to the side of the stage and I just stood and listened to the murmur of the crowd. I had chills run up and down my spine. I felt a premonition. I felt in my soul that my impossible dreams of taking my still unwritten book to Broadway is not just possible, it is imminent. I knew in that moment that this can happen for me.

Last week I showed up to one of my Kundalini master teacher's classes to find a substitute teacher and was reminded of the importance of the mantra "I Am." He also said that once you start to change the way you speak to yourself, the way you use “I Am” that your life will start to change. People will begin to appear in your life to help you manifest your dreams. You just need to have the courage to change the script from a negative form to a positive form.

I am ready to write the book I have been preparing for my entire life. I am ready to believe that my once impossible dreams can come true.