My dream needs to be colossal, rocket-shooting-myself-over-to-the-moon, and truly magnificent that it overwhelms me with excitement just thinking of it or seeing myself in the threshold of achieving it. Sometimes a venerable type of fear wakes me up from daydreaming because I realized how difficult the path really is and don’t even get me started on competition.
Start small and simple, begin things slow and grow gradually.
These were accumulated advice from friends and my writing mentor. When I consider what I need to achieve my dreams, I come up with many excuses like having no money, no talent and no opportunities that hinders me. Truthfully, what impedes me the most is fear that I will fail and it’ll all be downhill from there. It’s so much easier to just give up. … Now that I wrote it here, I gave myself the opportunity to see the very bottom. Honestly, I’ve been running away from opportunities to become a published author for several decades. So, either I stay here in the bottom or climb up. I should use whatever resources I currently have: life-given lessons, writing lessons from my mentor, and writing opportunity to readers like you. These are all resources to wake myself up, my talent and continue to expand my horizon. Every step I take, however minute and exiguous, leads me towards reaching my goal.
This is what it is, life’s paradox of big dreams and simple beginnings. Just check out how life around us begins every single time. Back when we lived in Stuttgart, a couple of trees are growing along the side of the main street. Their branches are directly in front of the windows of our 2nd floor apartment. After the winter spell, every branch would start to manifest the small steps to greet the next season. A small, shy bud here, a very small leaf there, and a bird hopping from one branch to the next as if testing each one. Yet come summer time, the trees do not even permit us to see beyond their leafy branches. Each tree may have begun at a different point in time during spring but they are all flourishing equally by summer and displaying their array of abundant colors by fall.
The great thing about dreaming is that you should go big or go home and the odd thing about any beginning is that one has to start small.