After an identity-rattling end to the holiday season last year, I was ready to feel optimistic. I set goals for the new year, breaking it down by each domain in my life. This was revived behavior. I'd opted out of goals and resolutions for many years. Since all that has gone down with the pandemic and unrest (and not to mention my own health adversities), I haven't really looked at this list of goals for the year. In some ways, I think, who cares?
Needless to say, it's been an emotional and stressful year so far, yet I can find peace somehow. It leaves me feeling uneasy. Cliff's fortune from our Chinese food takeout was about achieving his dream. I was relieved that I had chosen the other cookie that said something spiritless like "enjoy your day." The "dream" question has perplexed me for the last several years. Since I was 17, all I wanted was to be in New York City. So, in many ways, I feel like my dream had been met years ago. What more is there than to be here? Everything else follows it, just as I've imagined it to be. It's a dream that keeps giving. No more dreams.
In the same breath, I know that I say this because I feel like I've established my career and am satisfied in it. Perhaps I've been in denial about calling this part of my life a "dream." My identity-- though met with new challenges like being a daughter/sister-in-law, or being uncomfortable being comfortable-- feels as settled as can be at this moment. I have never understood myself better than I do now, and I only anticipate more insight as I continue to evolve. I don't wish to be in my 20s again, figuring out my career options, or in the beginning stages of a romantic relationship, where everything was wrought with insecurity and doubt. Not to say there was nothing good about it (what about the brazen passions with action? I miss that). It was mostly good. Just a lot of wandering and exploring.
I don't have dreams? I noticed that while my days are productive, I spend a great deal of time daydreaming. I realized hours will pass without me noticing how much time I've been living in a past or future fantasyland. Sometimes these daydreams drive me to keep going. Sometimes it feels like a high, that my heart is about to burst, the way running sometimes does for me, or when I'm listening to music. I guess because all these things inspire me.
There's a future me out there that I fantasize, and there's the past me that I can't get over. That leaves me here, exactly where I'm supposed to be.
