I have a little (big) dream, that I haven’t told anybody about, yet.
Not anybody but my journal and my oracle cards. Sometimes, it’s my escapist fantasy. Sometimes, it feels like the true essence of what I want my life to look like. What it could look like if I dared to be fully, deeply myself, out loud.
My shadows, and my sexy, dark Lilith self and all that, integrated. I have not spoken this out loud, anywhere, to anyone, because I feel afraid that putting it out there will make me beholden to it - which is not inherently a bad thing?
But a little rat lives in my brain, one that I have never been able to flush out. A perfectionist, people-pleasing rat that will begin squeaking really loud about “You shared with all these people that you want to someday do this, now if you’re not already doing it a hundred hours a day and already achieving it, they’re all watching you fail at what you said you want to do.”
It feels safe to keep it a secret so that I don’t rush myself into being admonished by that rodent.
“You should have made a 100 steps into this yesterday, already, because you announced it.”
The how and the when that my logical, rational, normal rat keeps throwing at me has actually made me more paralyzed than it has contributed to my progress.
There is also this very loud, confident voice within me - loud, because for too many years I’ve trained my brain to only tune into this radio channel frequency - which says that the only way to achieve anything is to work yourself hard into burnout, suffering, struggling, exhaustion and misery. This world has a fetish for dramatic suffering. If your business wasn’t born of deep trauma, abuse, poverty, this and that, your success story isn’t worth it. You don’t get to get there softly and gently. Your success is noble when you crucify yourself into it.
These voices tell me that me living out this dream must look like a really hardworking, tired version of myself who has all the external markers checked off, and Vogue publications as testaments to how well I achieved that dream. That me has absolutely no time or energy to really enjoy life whatsoever.
I’m a luxury girl, I love the finer things in life. And I’m a little sad to report that the only examples I ever saw of those who can access that abundance are providers who spoil me with these luxuries because they never have the time to enjoy it themselves. It feels like an inevitable fate that I, too, will someday become them.
This is probably so basic and so cringe to many, but personally, a key marker of happiness and success for me - something I always wish for but seldom dare to speak for fear of being “not a cool feminist enough” - is that I want to be a woman who has a career that, while keeping me feeling abundant, is also one that always, always gives me the time, space and freedom to have hours to myself for home and family, every day.
And by that I could even mean just myself and a bunch of cats. Maybe a partner. I’m not into human children, but I’m still such a nourish and nurture woman. I love being the woman who wakes up and makes homemade meals, everyday. Who tends to a beautiful home - physically and spiritually. Who has time for yoga and rituals. Home and hearth is sacred to me, and having these aspects of traditional femininity in my life feels like something so necessary for my personal fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness. I’d abhorr having eight hour workdays five days a week.
I want to have time for ritualistic hours spent in lovemaking, long bubble baths, witchcraft with morning coffee, hosting fabulous dinners for friends that I treat as family, having the kind of home where the pickles, sauces and spice mixes are all made by me, living in tune with the seasons, you get the drift.
And I want to do this as someone who easefully, joyfully makes space for it - not a burntout, tired, “she does it all” superwoman.
Of course I love to work. I wonder why I sound so apologetic and convincing as I say that. One is supposed to say this. One is supposed to love struggle.
While I have a really weird, sad and sorry relationship with the word “work” - it brings up so much dread for me due to my trauma from being literally hospitalized with burnout.
I want my career to have many, many moments of feeling like play, service, devotion, love, and passion. When I’m lost in clothes, textiles, art, writing, fashion, styling and all these beautiful realms that I have studied for so many years, I have moments where I feel like being in Julian Morrow’s classroom.
“Do you really think what we do is work?
”What else should I call it?”
I should call it the most glorious kind of play.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History
I want to feel the joy of providing for myself, without sacrificing on the joy of being a woman who is deeply attuned to, present for and pouring energy into her home and hearth.
I was recently listening in on a beautiful episode in my yoga studio, and I thought of this -
I do not, right now, this red hot minute, have the space to invest monetary energy into this dream of mine.
Right now, I’m still tending to and working with the brand I already have - my curatorial Indian textiles, slow fashion, webshop and blog.
But I do have time to invest, I do have metaphysical energy to invest. I can daydream, I can sketch, I can make Pinterest moodboards, I can just play with this dream without making a single plan that is bound to linear space, time, money and strategy.
I do have creative energy to invest. I do have imaginary scenarios in the shower to invest.
Why does it feel right to invest into a dream only when it’s about money, an immediate strategy, a whole action plan, a whole outcome/goal/end result we have to quickly get?
If I could only spend twenty minutes a day saving Pinterest dreams to a moodboard about my future dream life while already doing my present work - which is also beautiful, for it is me living out the dream life of five years younger me - isn’t that also so enough, for this season?
If I release the how and the when, there is so much I can already do to take baby steps towards this dream.
Maybe this dream never even materializes, and I drift into something else, but for now, even giving myself the permission to play with it without attachment to outcomes, isn’t that joyful enough?
Isn’t connecting to joy the ultimate creative juice?
Isn’t it okay to have a dream that might be very different from what you’re doing right now, and just letting yourself dream anyway?
Isn’t it enough to put only magic into this dream, but not your money, just yet?
Do you also have a dream, just like I do?
Does every dream have to culminate into a biography, a success story, a before-after post?
What if I dreamed and played with this dream for a while, and never told anybody of it?