Hi, guys!
Not only is it a new year, it’s a new decade. (Sick of hearing that yet?) Let’s start this shit off right.
Everyone has dreams. Or at least, everyone should.
But so many people give up on their dreams or spend more time fantasizing about the dream come true aspect than they do actually working for it.
Humans love short cuts and easy little tricks to cut the work load in half. We love the idea of things just happening for us even better.
But.
(Yeah, I know, I’m a terrible person for this next part.)
That isn’t how it works.
Not unless you’re in the 1%.
For the vast majority, making your dreams come true takes time and effort. It takes work.
That’s it.
That’s the big secret, the little trick.
Effort.
Actually. Fucking. Trying.
Some parts will be easier than others, of course. Some parts will be so hard that you want to smash something to bits.
But you still have to put in the time to get to the “dream come true” part.
Now, I’m not 100% there yet. I’m not living my dream, and I admit that freely.
But I intend to, at some point.
As such, even with family visiting for the past couple weeks and the stress/busy nature of the holidays, I’ve still spent time on my books.
I’ve made it through a third of the final round of edits of World for the Broken and put together promotional materials. I did promo stuff for The Gem of Meruna and rereleased it. I even managed roughly 3,500 words (idk exactly, I don’t remember what my word count was a couple weeks ago) on my new WIP and started working on a cover. I know that’s not a lot of words over two weeks, but alongside all the stuff for my other projects, it’s decent.
Basically, even through the holidays, an author’s work never sleeps. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love the worlds I’ve built for these stories and want to share them with you.
That means spending time in those worlds, in the minds of those characters. (Which certainly isn’t a bad thing.)
And eventually, that time and effort (spent doing something I love) will lead me to my dream of being a stay-at-home author. Yes, I’m going to daydream about what it would be like to already be there.
But I’m also going to do the work necessary to get there.
That means that when I want to relax, I explore the worlds of my stories more often than the worlds of the video games I used to sink months’ worth of play time into. When I get off a 12 hour shift on a Sunday night and want to go to bed, I still do my blog. Every week. So that I can post it early Monday morning before I go to sleep.
Your schedule will obviously be different from mine, and you can adjust it as need be. But the effort has to be there.
At some point, you have to stop talking about it, stop daydreaming, and just do. Take a step.
No tricks.
No short cuts.
Because that isn’t how life works.
So please, whatever your dream is, give it the time and effort it deserves. “Life” is not an excuse to set your dreams aside. Your shows will still be there after you do some shit to make your dreams happen. So will the closet you keep telling yourself you’ll clean out, so stop staring at it, thinking of what to do with it just to procrastinate. That won’t help you reach your goals.
Life is always going to happen around you. You just have to make things work.
Because when life steps aside, it’s too late for dreams.
Now, that got a little darker than I expected when I started this blog…but what the hell? That’s pretty normal for anything I write.
In short, don’t fucking slack. DO YOUR SHIT.
K, thanks.
Lol.
Keep reading. Keep writing.
Later.