Daydreaming and Doing

Daydreaming.

It's funny. Daydreams are nothing at all like dreams. So why do we call them dreams?

"I have dreamed a dream!"

Really he daydreams a daydream.

I daydream more than anybody I know. Daydreams and plans and lists and schemes and wishes. I have more plans in my back pocket than a plenitude of project managers stuck around a conference table.

Some of my daydreams I've daydreamed today:

• a freezer stocked with frozen peach upside down cakes
• apple handpies, strawberry handpies, blueberry handpies, raspberry handpies, peach handpies
• a fresh, homemade loaf of bread at the beginning of each week
• a visit to Idaho
• the tools I'll buy
• the sofa table, kitchen table, stepstools, outdoor seating, and shelving I'll build
• staying in bed for three days straight (I have a killer of a head cold)
• new planner pages I'll design
• the quilts I'll finish
• ordering seeds from the three organic seed catalogs I've requested (I don't have a yard)
• gardening (I still don't have a yard)
• making delicious, simple, home cooked meals from the juicy berries and fresh vegetables I've grown
• fiscal responsibility and financial security
• Thanksgiving in Kentucky
• books, books, and books
• canning beans
• supporting local farmers
• having two freezers stocked to the nines with perfect food rotation

Doing.

I don't know that I'm much of a doer. I do so much less than I dream. Of course, I say that from my very own house that I bought with money I saved from working the same job for six a half years. I have shelves and shelves of books I've read, a closet full of clothes I've worn to see people and places, an atlas squiggled all over with yellow highlighter to show where I've been.

So I must do some things some times.


Daydreaming and Doing.

I'm trying to let go. To be loosey goosey with my life and my time. To not schedule everything to the tiniest, infinitesimal bit and then be devastated when it doesn't work.

Will this help me do more of my daydreams? I haven't decided yet. I wish I had empirical evidence that tells me it will help.

I don't have the evidence. Which is probably a good thing.


Daydreaming and Doing as Part of Living.

The goal is not to do. Neither is the goal to daydream. The goal is to Live. To live happily and well. Doing is part of living. Daydreaming is another part of living. Neither can subsume the most important thing, which is living.

Do you know what it means to live?

I hope I'm not the only one that forgets that living is the thing. I would feel more human and less awkward and gangly knowing it's a common weakness.

I suppose there's no evidence there either.

What do you do that makes you forget living?

Is it the humdrum of life? Anyone who thinks life is humdrum is not living. This I know.

Is it doing, like me? Or the pursuit of people, friends and other types of relationships both more and less significant? Is it knowledge? A sense of freedom? A desire to be thought well of?


Living.

This life is full of so many things. The abundance is staggering.

Stumbling over the sheer everythingness of life is one of my greatest weaknesses.

I want to stand tall and straight without stumbles. To be at peace on the inside but also to get the very most out of this life that I possibly can.

That may be the most impossible daydream of all.