The Stuff of Dreams is Being Here Now

I just got through watching the Oscars and somewhere in the midst of the clothes and the egos, a not so small thing became evident. The reason we are mesmerized by this display is because it represents the stuff of dreams, the stuff meaning dreams turned into ACTION. Almost every single person on that stage accepting their award had a dream, got the training they needed and took the steps to make it happen.

For some it happens early in their career. For others, like Jeff Bridges, it comes after a lifetime of pursuit, or Kathryn Bigelow, who not only has spent a lifetime pursuing her dream, but broke ground tonight for women director's everywhere. And for those who never get that level of acknowledgment or acclaim? My bet is that those folks would still say the pursuit is worth it.

As I'm in the beginning stages of this process and project, with just a week under my belt of daily action toward making this particular dream real, it's so easy to imagine the end result. One of the hardest aspects is to stay focused on the present and to not get ahead of myself. And as I ready myself for week two, I'm going to take a step back to see what I actually did get done:

1. Creative Concept Plan. This is the outline, the spill, the post-brain dump that will serve as the overall road map for the project. It was a relief to finally translate all the yellow pad scribblings into one document.
2. Knowledge Map. I defined what I think I know and what I know I don't know and had a great time doing it.
3. Segmented Customer Profiles: I sketched out some rough ideas of who might actually be interested in purchasing my product. I tried to go beyond the regular mom and dad and to bring in some character building to this aspect, which seems to engage both my fiction writer and fortune teller sensibilities. I'll be returning to this to really flesh them out, so to speak and to bring in my "What I do Know" knowledge base.

As for this week? I have some bill paying work to attend to which will bring a few more balls into the juggling act. It would be easy to lapse into self-pity mode and bemoan the fact that I don't have endless amounts of time to accelerate this process. But what would be the point? And what is the way to handle the time crunch that is my life?

Simple. Do one thing at a time. One Dream a Month. One goal a day, or in the case of this week - one goal for the week.

So this week will be focused on writing my sentence, which is the next critical step in defining the purpose of the project. That's my action, to focus on one thing for the week and devote whatever free time I have after work, kids, marriage, yoga and sleep...

Off to sleep. The rest will come after that.