projects & discoveries

A friend asked me recently, "What are you into right now?" And my honest answer was, "Projects."

It might sound kind of silly, but my hope is that by re-learning how to dream little-- and some of these projects are really little-- I'm finding my way to dreaming bigger.

Here's what I think: Dreaming about our lives and what we can accomplish in them is a gift. It is our own form of creation. It shows that we have the imagination to travel beyond our circumstances into something not yet concrete, the confidence to actually believe our idea can be achieved, and the courage to begin pursuing it-- even though the path is rarely well-marked.

There's usually an element of fear in committing to, and following, an idea or a hope: As all these little projects keep reminding me, every dream requires a bit of daring. I keep finding my thoughts following the same well-worn path:

I don't know how to start.
Or keep going.
There are no instructions.
I don't know how everything will turn out.
I can't see the finished product up front.
How will I know if it was worth all my time, effort, and worry?
What if it ends up being a waste?
What if I can't do it?

Most starting points seem overwhelmingly insufficient when contrasted against the final vision in our minds. But really...you can't be too afraid to lay one brick because it's not yet a house. You don't have to accomplish everything at once, or even know how everything's going to happen. You just have to be willing to take a series of calculated and not-so-calculated risks, the first of which is the first step. Just start. Then try something else. Loving the process-- beginning, continuing, exploring, resolving, persisting-- allows you to discover your own competence and imagination, to discover things you didn't know you held within yourself. So much of dreaming is about just deciding that whatever you end up with, taking that risk and that journey was worth it.

So...onward, to more projects.