So, what's new?
Around here, theater is new.
We are getting a crash course in auditions and all things theater.
I think this is going to be a learning season!
Little Mr. declared about a year ago or so that he wanted to grow up to be an actor. He has actually said it off and on for a long time, but more in passing than in seriousness.
Last summer he did a round of camp with First Stage. They put on one amazing summer camp. We thought he would enjoy it, meet some new people and work out some social skills issues. It did all that and a little more.
That bug bit him.
This year he got a little more focused and serious in his talk. His dreams began to take shape.
He still wasn't ready to take the leap though.
No auditions for him.
Fast forward to this summer. Another season of summer camp with First Stage.
That bug bit harder.
Little Mr. got brave. He auditioned for a local theater. He auditioned at First Stage. He has a call back with the first theater. He has an opportunity to audition for an upcoming production of Les Mis.
I suddenly feel like Dorothy being sucked into the tornado.
There is a sudden whirlwind of monologues, sheet music and head shots. There are piles of emails, map questing and voice mails.
I'm pretty sure we won't drop out of the sky and crush anyone like a farm house in Oz, but I am curious to see just exactly where this drops out.
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Friday, July 22, 2011
Wanna Make Your Dreams Come True?
Lots of people talk about their dreams. Usually, it's how their dreams aren't coming true and they won't. They're sucked into this never ending circle of dreaming and being disappointed.
How does it happen like that and how do you change the cycle to be dreams and success?
A dream without action is nothing. It's just a fantasy. Even if you're praying, unless you're going to get a straight up miracle from God, a dream without action is simply time wasted.
What I have found is that people get into cycles of dreams and disillusion. They dream a great big dream and hope and pray and nothing happens. Then they get discouraged. Then they dream again and the cycle repeats. Often the dreams get bigger and the disappointments get greater. It starts to taint their world, color what they see. And suddenly all their life is a big fat unhappy moment. Everything is about how they are loosing and not getting the prizes and rewards or even what they've tricked themselves into believing they deserve.
Thinking about deserving something is a scary place to be. It's a place to be very cautious. It can slide into entitlement. And for me, I'd say, we really don't deserve anything. We're not really entitled to anything. We can sure want things, desire them and so on, but deserve, well, I think maybe only God can handle that one and I am not going to be the human that tells God He's doing it wrong or not giving me what I deserve or what I think I need or what I feel I'm entitled too. No way. I'm not going there. Because I know what I deserve from God and I know instead I receive grace, mercy, forgiveness and love.
Now, I wasn't saying something like you shouldn't get paid for working, not at all. That's not what I was getting at.
So what about those people that seem to have the golden ride? You know the people, the ones who seem to always have their dreams come true.
I'm going to tell you that they see the world through different eyes. They are hopeful. These are people who are optimistic. Optimistic and practical.
It's simple what they do. Really. We can all have their success if we want it.
They take those dreams and make them goals. They just move the category or change the label if you will. They look at the dream and see it for what it is, a final outcome of something. Then, they break it down into it's steps and accomplish it one step at a time. They realize and recognize that reaching these dreams/goals is going to take some real hard work on their part and time committed to the task. They pray in addition to all this hard work.
Am I good at this? Nope. Not at all. But, I do finally understand it and just having that understanding has brought me some peace.
It helps me to not get caught in feelings and be able to see things for what they are. Almost every dream can be pushed into a goal and worked towards.
I'd even argue that something that is a dream of yours that you can't make into a goal with a plan of action is something that really shouldn't be a dream for you. It's more like a wish.
I've had just enough of the dreams pushed into the goal category and reach relative success in their completion or accomplishment to make me believe this is a part of how life goes.
I'm sure to many of you this just isn't news, but to some of you, maybe it's an ah ha moment.
Pick a dream of yours. Break it down into it's steps and start working. Work hard, without giving up, without giving in to all the cheap excuses that we all come up with when the job is hard and thankless. Work hard and then when you reach your goal, be sure to look around at all those people you believed had the golden lucky streak in their lives. The ones that live a charmed life where everything goes their way and it seems simple and easy. I bet if you look at them real hard, real honestly, you'll find some people who really work hard to get to where they are and what they've accomplished.
How does it happen like that and how do you change the cycle to be dreams and success?
A dream without action is nothing. It's just a fantasy. Even if you're praying, unless you're going to get a straight up miracle from God, a dream without action is simply time wasted.
What I have found is that people get into cycles of dreams and disillusion. They dream a great big dream and hope and pray and nothing happens. Then they get discouraged. Then they dream again and the cycle repeats. Often the dreams get bigger and the disappointments get greater. It starts to taint their world, color what they see. And suddenly all their life is a big fat unhappy moment. Everything is about how they are loosing and not getting the prizes and rewards or even what they've tricked themselves into believing they deserve.
Thinking about deserving something is a scary place to be. It's a place to be very cautious. It can slide into entitlement. And for me, I'd say, we really don't deserve anything. We're not really entitled to anything. We can sure want things, desire them and so on, but deserve, well, I think maybe only God can handle that one and I am not going to be the human that tells God He's doing it wrong or not giving me what I deserve or what I think I need or what I feel I'm entitled too. No way. I'm not going there. Because I know what I deserve from God and I know instead I receive grace, mercy, forgiveness and love.
Now, I wasn't saying something like you shouldn't get paid for working, not at all. That's not what I was getting at.
So what about those people that seem to have the golden ride? You know the people, the ones who seem to always have their dreams come true.
I'm going to tell you that they see the world through different eyes. They are hopeful. These are people who are optimistic. Optimistic and practical.
It's simple what they do. Really. We can all have their success if we want it.
They take those dreams and make them goals. They just move the category or change the label if you will. They look at the dream and see it for what it is, a final outcome of something. Then, they break it down into it's steps and accomplish it one step at a time. They realize and recognize that reaching these dreams/goals is going to take some real hard work on their part and time committed to the task. They pray in addition to all this hard work.
Am I good at this? Nope. Not at all. But, I do finally understand it and just having that understanding has brought me some peace.
It helps me to not get caught in feelings and be able to see things for what they are. Almost every dream can be pushed into a goal and worked towards.
I'd even argue that something that is a dream of yours that you can't make into a goal with a plan of action is something that really shouldn't be a dream for you. It's more like a wish.
I've had just enough of the dreams pushed into the goal category and reach relative success in their completion or accomplishment to make me believe this is a part of how life goes.
I'm sure to many of you this just isn't news, but to some of you, maybe it's an ah ha moment.
Pick a dream of yours. Break it down into it's steps and start working. Work hard, without giving up, without giving in to all the cheap excuses that we all come up with when the job is hard and thankless. Work hard and then when you reach your goal, be sure to look around at all those people you believed had the golden lucky streak in their lives. The ones that live a charmed life where everything goes their way and it seems simple and easy. I bet if you look at them real hard, real honestly, you'll find some people who really work hard to get to where they are and what they've accomplished.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
700 Words Is The Mental Equivilant Of A Sneeze
Sorry it's been quiet over here, but I told you that might happen.
So just what have I been up to since the very busy start to last week?
Homework.
I'm not complaining though, it's a good sort of homework to have. I read books and write.
On Wednesday I started Small Steps by Louis Sachar. On Thursday I finished it. You may know him as the author of Holes. Small Steps is the follow up book. Armpit and X-ray get into a mess and it resolves itself in a way that for me, was satisfying, simply because it didn't end in the known happy ending sort of way. To me, it seemed to resolve in a real life kind of way. A little of this, a little of that, a little bittersweet, nothing too solid. Just like life. Situations have a way of working themselves out, even if you know it's a just for the moment sort of ending and that more life is indeed coming your way.
I have another stack of books sitting here to read. That pulls in a certain amount of my time, between kids and chores and all that other stuff. Again, though, it's very enjoyable.
The next part of my homework is the writing part. This first assignment is already proving to be a challenge for me. Of course, before I began, it seemed pretty straight forward and simple. That is the way of learning though, it seemed easy enough before I began it.
They provided me with a series of pictures. My job was to choose one, somehow use some part or all of that picture to start a story. Then write a short story. Short meaning 500 to 700 words.
You all know, by now, that I am wordy. So this is almost like a punishment for me.
I chose my picture, made about 12 starts that I scrapped and then got rolling on the real story. Great right? Right. My story is about 700 pages, not 700 words. To give you an idea of my challenge, I broke it up and decided to just use a scene from the story as my short story for the assignment. Deadlines loom after all. Well, here's the thing. Even my "edited" version was 2000 words.
That means I've spent the last day or so ignoring the fact that I have to go do some serious chopping to this scene to make it clean and well, short.
In the end, though, even with it being hard and sort of like cutting off your own hair in the mirror, I'm liking it. The scene will be great when it's done, and I'm thrilled to have such a full story idea going, even if it is a million words long.
Let's just wait to see how much I'm still enjoying all these books, deadlines and edits by the end of 2 years. Yeah, this is a 2 year course. I agreed to take the long version. Crazy.
So that's where I've been. It's where I'm going to be. But I'll be here too. Life just gives me way too much to be all that quiet for all that long.
So just what have I been up to since the very busy start to last week?
Homework.
I'm not complaining though, it's a good sort of homework to have. I read books and write.
On Wednesday I started Small Steps by Louis Sachar. On Thursday I finished it. You may know him as the author of Holes. Small Steps is the follow up book. Armpit and X-ray get into a mess and it resolves itself in a way that for me, was satisfying, simply because it didn't end in the known happy ending sort of way. To me, it seemed to resolve in a real life kind of way. A little of this, a little of that, a little bittersweet, nothing too solid. Just like life. Situations have a way of working themselves out, even if you know it's a just for the moment sort of ending and that more life is indeed coming your way.
I have another stack of books sitting here to read. That pulls in a certain amount of my time, between kids and chores and all that other stuff. Again, though, it's very enjoyable.
The next part of my homework is the writing part. This first assignment is already proving to be a challenge for me. Of course, before I began, it seemed pretty straight forward and simple. That is the way of learning though, it seemed easy enough before I began it.
They provided me with a series of pictures. My job was to choose one, somehow use some part or all of that picture to start a story. Then write a short story. Short meaning 500 to 700 words.
You all know, by now, that I am wordy. So this is almost like a punishment for me.
I chose my picture, made about 12 starts that I scrapped and then got rolling on the real story. Great right? Right. My story is about 700 pages, not 700 words. To give you an idea of my challenge, I broke it up and decided to just use a scene from the story as my short story for the assignment. Deadlines loom after all. Well, here's the thing. Even my "edited" version was 2000 words.
That means I've spent the last day or so ignoring the fact that I have to go do some serious chopping to this scene to make it clean and well, short.
In the end, though, even with it being hard and sort of like cutting off your own hair in the mirror, I'm liking it. The scene will be great when it's done, and I'm thrilled to have such a full story idea going, even if it is a million words long.
Let's just wait to see how much I'm still enjoying all these books, deadlines and edits by the end of 2 years. Yeah, this is a 2 year course. I agreed to take the long version. Crazy.
So that's where I've been. It's where I'm going to be. But I'll be here too. Life just gives me way too much to be all that quiet for all that long.
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