Getting things done!
And how to make dreams come true...
The view from my outhouse in Zalanpatak where I write most of my substack stories.
When I recently asked a friend what she would like me to write about on Substack she said. “How to make dreams come true.” She is by far one of the most intelligent and socially sharp people I know. But she doesn’t enjoy her work. I pondered her question for a bit, like I am doing now while sitting in my outhouse longer than necessary. I brought my coffee.
My insomnia has been my nightly companion for over a year now and I need at least three coffees and two hours to engage. The sun is out and I hear dogs barking, birds chirping and cow bells. The countryside serenade of spring. As it warms up outside the crickets will join in later with their own symphony. If my head wasn’t bobbing from sheer exhaustion I would sit here and be still. Savour the moment. Instead I am pushing myself to contemplate. And write.
My friend’s question sent my brain into one of its special warps and webs. I thought of dreams I had in the past and how I went about making them come true. I thought of where I am today in life and if there is anything in there that resembles my dream. Do dreams come true always live up to our expectations? What happened the dreams a ditched along the way? Do I walk back to retrieve them, or will the ones that still deserve my dedication pop back up when the time is right?
Maybe my dreams weren’t curated enough. Maybe they were a bit like my brain. Going into too many directions at once.
I dreamt of being biologist, an archaeologist (Indiana Jones style), I briefly wanted to be the first female president of the United states (and was genuinely disappointed when I found out you have to be born there to qualify - which I find ironic as it is a continent stolen by immigrants centuries ago) and become the editor of Vogue. Maybe my dreams weren’t curated enough. Maybe they were a bit like my brain. Going into too many directions at once. These days I don’t know what I dream about anymore. I want an original 1930ies Roma wagon on wheels as a guest house in my garden.
Sometimes I want to make dreams sprout like seeds. On their own. Maybe with a little help. Or make them come true just like magic. But in reality our dreams seem to require a bit of effort. I will probably have to build the wagon myself.
I think about the forty plus people who are always mentioned when someone writes about change later in life. There are plenty of examples of fresh starts that led to succes. Vera Wang. Or of those who had a comeback. “Fat forty and finished” was how John Travolta was described before Quentin Tarantino. I read an essay about this recently on Substack. There was an article in the New York Times about it. CNN covered it in a segment and Forbes also addressed it. It’s a recurring theme, it seems. I guess after forty we are in midlife, but does wanting a change always imply “crisis”?
I had a friend in high school who wrote me elaborate love letters and brought me gifts. It often made me feel uncomfortable as I couldn’t reciprocate his feelings but cared about him deeply. He once stood in front of me in the crowded hallway by the front door. He looked at me as if he had just had a major revelation and was eager to share it with me. “You are a late bloomer.” I was probably around sixteen at the time and had a lifetime ahead of me still. Like most teenagers I thought my life would start after school and I couldn’t wait.
Like most teenagers I thought my life would start after school and I couldn’t wait.
Some of my old friends and I have been reminiscing (that’s why this weeks picture essay is old photos from way back when…) and looking back I realize how incredibly important those high school years were. We were challenged in so many ways, not just intellectually, but by troubles at home, by figuring out who we were and wanted to become. I realize now how we were. Full of life and very engaged.
What I had dreamt about in high school did manifest. When I listen to people like Joe Dispenza, or when I am trying to finish my Silva method course which has been sitting in my Dropbox for about 8 years now… the word manifesting pops up all the time. How to make things happen. I have two main examples of dreams coming true, in rather miraculous ways. And yet today, looking around me, thinking about my never ending to do list and how I always feel at the end of the day that I came up short no matter what I have accomplished it baffles me. How can I be living proof of dreams “magically manifesting” and still struggle? And why do I feel so unfulfilled, that no matter what I do it is never enough and it always feels as if something is still missing?
How can I be living proof of dreams “magically manifesting” and still struggle?
What most of “them”, add Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, and the entire Mindvalley crew to this, all have in common is: combine a clear focus and image with an elevated emotion, imagine what it’s like and start to feel and act as if it has already happened. You have to give what you want to receive, and you have to learn go so it can come to you. Leave it in the hands of infinite intelligence. The universe is much more clever than any of us. It’s our job to picture the what, and leave the how up to the higher power.
When I mention the word “manifest” to my friend she is quick to dismiss it. “It’s a scam.” I don’t agree. Manifesting isn’t magic. Conscious manifesting, law of attraction, turning yourself into a magnet, effortlessly rolling through life getting everything you want. I don’t think it works like that. But it works for me. It’s like meditation. The clearer the dream and the more aware and connected I am, the better I become at identifying what I need to do, and not do, in order to create my dream.
Manifesting to me doesn’t mean you make it all happen by conjuring things out of thin air. It makes you better equipped to spot and use the opportunities already out there. That without focus you might have missed.
“I have seen too many documentaires about this limbo jumbo, but the way you put it makes sense.”
“I have seen too many documentaires about this limbo jumbo, but the way you put it makes sense.”
My friend is now reading 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkman . I could only find a summary of it on my book app, and I will dig into it later today.
“If you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. But that’s no reason for despair.
Confronting our radical finitude – and how little control we really have – is the key to a fulfilling and meaningfully productive life.”
I will take meaningful and fulfilling, but fuck “productivity. I want the “opposite”. I crave more moments of doing absolutely nothing, produce nothing, not even a single random thought and yet feel fulfilled. And not feel like I am either faffing around aimlessly or in hyperactive mode attempting to do everything at once.
Knowing what you want and what you ware willing to do in order to get it are the starting point of any new journey. In my last year in high school I knew I wanted to combine writing with fashion. By voicing this, people who cared about me talked about it too. This created the connections needed to find my way there. There were obstacles. If I had let those deterred me I wouldn’t have “made it happen”. Living in London studying fashion, working for Vivienne Westwood, it was all a dream come true.
There is another one of these energetic beings, or “gurus”, who gave me some great advice that took about a decade to sink in. He has a wonderfully simple exercise that brings great clarity if you do it quickly and honestly.
Write down the ten things in your life that matter most to you. Let it sink in a bit and then put them in order of priority.
Write down the ten things in your life that matter most to you. Let it sink in a bit and then put them in order of priority.
Now write down the ten things that you have spent most of your time in the last month. Let that sink in and then organize that list in the order of most time spent.
Then put the two lists side by side and compare. Is what you spend most of your time on what matters most to you?
I do this regularly to check myself. Often it’s confrontational. I haven’t reached the point yet where the two lists feel aligned. Only very recently I have been able to shift it. Last night a friend wanted my perspective on this years Eurovision. He knows that I am “into gender politics”. I come from an extremely liberal and open minded family (my mum raised me without prejudice which made being out in the real world a bit of a shock I have to say… but I am forever grateful for her “people are people” attitude and unconditional love and respect) which meant that growing up I was surrounded by an abundance of people, many of which I know now had to put up with rather a lot of prejudice and discrimination. My friend is devoutly Orthodox and traditional. I adore him and would have loved nothing more than to have an in-depth discussion about gender and identity representation. But as I told him:
“I completely missed the euro thing. As I said at the moment I am in my writing bubble. That means that I am keeping exposure to what’s happening in the world to a minimum. It’s the only way I can fully immerse myself in my fiction writing process.”
For me this is new. To not engage. To put things on hold. To defer. To not accommodate. But in order to secure enough time and brain space for my writing I have to. I can look after myself, my pets and the garden. And write. But that really is it. I have no stretch left. After that I meditate and to bed. I go to bed early as I am woken up around four each morning and am usually outside with my coffee around five, trying to come to terms with another day starting when I don’t quite feel ready for it yet.
In the past I have always wanted feedback on anything I wrote. University papers, newspaper articles, poems. Now I don’t. It started with Substack. Here I went unfiltered for the first time. Now I do the same with fiction. Norman Mailer said: “when I am writing a book nobody gets to read it until it’s finished. It is between me and the book. I am having a secret love affair with the story.”
I make an exception for my dad. He gets me and he gets the bizarre theme that I have chosen. I also have chosen a genre to write in that I myself rarely read. I am in all ways in a process that is so unfamiliar to me, that while experiencing it I can feel myself change. It is profoundly affecting me in unexpected ways. And I love it.
Every Tuesday morning my dad and I have a video call to discuss the progress of the book. I had initially wanted to write it during the winter where short dark days spent glued to the wood burner seemed the perfect setting for some novel writing.
I was off to a flying start but then brought to screeching halt. The Magic Four (the puppies) arrived suddenly, and Lolli and Mami departed just as sudden. Standing by their graves already thinking of what flowers to plant there in spring sent me into a spiral that I am still partially struggling to pull myself out of. The formidable Joyce Carol Oats said that if you want to be a writer you have to write. Every day. Write when you are sick, write when you are tired, write when you are elated with joy, write when you are completely desperate and disillusioned with life.
I wanted to but I couldn’t. I jotted down notes here and there but I I couldn’t formulate any finished thoughts or come up with full sentences.
I wanted to but I couldn’t. I jotted down notes here and there but I I couldn’t formulate any finished thoughts or come up with full sentences.
Knowing what we want and create a clear picture may be just part of it. How much we want it is another. I moved to Transylvania to have a simple life that doesn’t involve a mortgage or a full time job. Post cancer those two were no longer an option for me. The simple life turned out to be a hard one. Full of obstacles. And I did let it deter me from my dream: which is to write whatever I want to write.
I haven’t slept last night. That’s four nights in a row now. I sat in bed at half past two in the morning watching Dexter and crying.
Today I dream of dreaming. Just let me sleep…