dreams unachieved
November 23, 2014
Last night I went to bed really early (9 p.m.), stayed awake thinking for a while, then fell asleep long before Spouse came to bed. I woke up a few times to write down dreams. But I think I got close to 12 hours of sleep. (Which I desperately needed.)
Among the things I thought about…
I’m 48 years old. If I think strategically about the next 12 years, when I look back on my life from the vantage point of age 60, what would I like to have accomplished?
- At least 1 poem and at least 1 essay published somewhere besides a blog;
- getting paid for something I wrote;
- my not-a-book poetry project executed;
- now that I have a name that’s all my own, “making a name for myself”;
- writing about the topics I have been avoiding;
- my Estuaries/Terroir project;
- write SFF;
- at least 3 garments that I created from ideas, and wear at least infrequently;
- modular garments (that I created);
- my tapestries somehow look ‘finished’;
- at least 1 tapestry created and executed here in Maryland;
- friends who are creative: visual artists & writers (that I can interact with offline, at least occasionally);
- learn to cook, and do it regularly;
- dance regularly;
- make sculptural things ~ with glass and metal; with paper; with fabric and wood;
- go to Iowa;
- use my passport;
- more solo travel!;
- create a Travelling Studio;
- attend at least 1 residency for writers or artists.
That’s enough to get me started…
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dreaming fish 
A good mix of the aspirational and the practical. Though I suspect you can already check-mark #12 unless you don’t count “online friends”. (But, yeah, that one’s tricky.)
Oops, I guess I need to edit that one. Of course online friends are friends! But, I’d like to have friends I can interact with offline, at least sometimes. I have no one in the entire state of Maryland like that (except Spouse).
I do get that. Of course, it’s partly my whole “I don’t really count” thing, but I have a hard time claiming to be a friend of someone I’ve only met online. There are kinds of interactions and relationships that really do require face to face. But on the other hand, I have a similarly hard time claiming to be a friend of someone when we’ve only interacted briefly, even in person. So the chance to develop an on-going conversation on-line can help jump-start an in-person friendship. Or maybe I just over-think things. In any case, I find your on-line personality fascinating and would hope that we would enjoy meeting in person some day too.
Spouse and I met and became good friends as penpals (pre-Internet). There are things it’s easier to say in print than in person. I’ve been fortunate to have had deeply intense and emotionally-intimate friendships develop online, beginning ~ 1998.
I agree with you, though, that in person it’s often tricky to figure out when you can consider someone a friend. Everything usually takes longer than I wish it would, and it doesn’t always work at all.
I’m definitely meeting some really interesting people – including you! – via Twitter.