I don’t dream anymore. And I don’t just mean when I’m sleeping although those have changed too. Instead of a list of what ifs, it’s a list of need to’s. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing but it’s just different. Nowadays I wake up mid thought, it’s like my brain never shuts off. I used to dream about impossible dreams. To others they seem so far-fetched, beyond the realm of possibility some may even say a waste of time. Like a kid that dreams of being an astronaut or a professional athlete and then they spend all their free time imagining what it would be like. In their minds they are already there and it makes them happy and maybe it throws a spark which smolders a bit and then burns out only to be replaced with some other childish conjuring, or maybe it ignites something bigger, but it was all the result of a dream and I don’t dream anymore. It’s not that I can’t and it’s even less that I don’t want to but they’ve just been replaced by plans and have to‘s and work towards but they’re different, they’re different than dreams. Dreams don’t have to make sense ,dreams don’t require a plan, dreams just make you happy, dreams just take you somewhere you’re not. And in the end it doesn’t really matter if you ever get to that place because it’s the happiness of the dream that matters. The act of dreaming the dream is where the unencumbered happiness lives. I've gotten busy, I've gotten successful, I've gotten productive but along the way I've stopped dreaming. I think I should change all that. I think my latest plan is, well, to not always have a plan. Deadline-shmed-line!
I haven’t completely lost touch with reality. I understand that there are things that need to be addressed in a timely manner. But I feel a need to back off of the intentional scheduling in the pursuit of whatever I’ve convinced myself is of the utmost importance.
Case in point. Becky and I bought our current property last June and almost every single day since I’ve been trying to get something done. The efficiency house and then converting the pole barn into my shop and then building the big house and on it goes. I realized the other day that I have never walked the south fence line of the property. I own 20 acres, of which I have never set foot on 10 acres of.
I want to walk in the woods and be transported to 1887 and be the first white man to blaze a trail there. Or just sit on a log and listen to nature. With no agenda, with no deadline, without one half of my brain whispering to the other “We gotta go! There’s too much to do, we’ll come back when the work is done.” That’s a lie by the way. I’ll never come back. That moment and the moment just before that moment when you listened to the whispers only happen once and when they’re gone, yep you guessed it, they’re just gone.
To try and recreate the moments that I let pass would only be at the expense of another moment that now can’t happen because I was somewhere else trying to catch up from the last thing I didn’t get to when I should have.
Long story short, It’s been a very productive year... but I’m tired. So, here it is. We move into the big house in June, we move Pat into the efficiency, I get a few recertification classes knocked out and take the Carpentry team to Nationals in Atlanta... and then... I quit.
I quit everything that keeps me from dreaming. If I’ve been grinding this hard for this long and I’m not in a place that allows me the option to choose how I fill my time and the freedom to reap the benefits of all that effort, then, why the heck did I do it?
It will not be a seamless transition I assure you. I’ve been “this guy” for a couple decades. But I’ve said that I’m done building when I’m 50. That’s only a year and a half away and then what? Sounds like a good thing to dream about.