March 05, 2002
I don’t think it’s been just an issue of focusing because yesterday, I solved that problem yet the words still weren’t coming out. Not because my brain was tangled but because I simply didn’t want to write.
I know why. It’s the pressure.
I used to think it was the pressure to make money that kept me from writing until I examined why I really wrote and money had nothing to do with it. Then I thought it was the pressure to produce something amazing within a year – which happens to be next month – until I realised I’ve made so many personal transformations that are more rewarding than the most amazing article could be. I was having a hard time finding where this feeling of pressure was coming from.
I found it last night.
This website and all that visit it.
In the beginning, I just had a simple idea to chronicle my dream of writing. I wasn’t sure anyone would ever read any of this or that it would have any effect. But it did in the biggest way I could have ever imagined.
The encouragement I received in the beginning helped me get through very dark patches and hearing about others dreams reminded me to keep pursuing mine.
But then something happened. The site started to receive a lot of visitors and I started to receive a lot of email of stories about dreams that people had but didn’t feel like they could act out. When they wrote me, they would almost say, “Here is my dream that I can’t live out, please take it with you as you live out yours and maybe that will be enough.”
People started to live vicariously through me, and that unnerved me to my core. Instead of people finding encouragement from my journey, people started to think that I was the only one who could do this. That I, simple Alex, possessed some kind of magic to make what I’m doing possible. Instead of hearing stories about how people had began to live their dreams in small or large ways, I kept hearing about dreams that weren’t going anywhere unless I could take them with me. All that pressure weighed heavily on me.
When I began this site, it wasn’t for people to say, “Look at her go. I wish I could do that.” It was so that people would say, “If she’s doing that, well so can I” and that each person who had a dream or a goal, would be able to pursue it at some point after reading all of this. My dream is not unique, I’m not even unique. And what I’m doing is not impossible but really, all too easy. It just takes a one realisation, a little guts and a few steps. It only seems impossible because you don’t hear about it that much. But imagine what would happen if we all did what we were meant to do? Imagine the roar we’d hear around the world.
So if you have a dream, please don’t put it in my carrying bag but instead, pursue it along side me. I need the company.
Elsewhere