“I will dream awake” or how I stopped holding back my dreams

Due to a combination of strange circumstances, I found myself in the square, so I decided to drink coffee and enjoy a little late summer Monday and the hustle and bustle of busy people. “Can’t stop the feeling” was heard from one of the nearby cafes and I was chemically pounding in rhythm and waiting for the double coffee I had ordered. How convenient, I thought, laughing to myself.

The cell phone clapped merrily across the table, and I eagerly ignored it, though I was actually eagerly awaiting some of the messages and calls. They didn’t seem so important to me at the time. I enjoyed the feeling, the moment, the atmosphere, the sun, the cheerful voices around me, the colors and the focus of the city.

It didn’t bother me what Monday was, what the work day was, and what my responsibilities were. The moment I decided to become a freelancer, I took on many responsibilities, but also many pleasures, one of which is to be the mistress of my time. Obligations and jobs, no matter how many there are, are not my masters, I am theirs. I can work from anywhere, anytime. I can sit in the garden and type texts, and I can here, sitting under umbrellas and watching happy and smiling people pass by.

A scene from a movie?

For some it may be. It’s a reality to me. Not so long ago it was just a dream. I watched movies about successful women who lived such a carefree life, drank coffee on Mondays during rush hour, thought about the shoes they would buy and the trips they would go on, and thought that was not possible. Not in Croatia. But it happens. Only in my situation should the scenes with the shoes I hate to buy be replaced by huge bookstores and new, interesting titles.

And while I was thus reminiscing about some of my less dazzling life moments and dreams that I had, and which I now live, I typed an email to Marietta who just this weekend sent the first proofreading changes to my new book.

At some earlier moment in my life, I would jump to heaven from the very thought of a new book, the idea of a new book, now it is something completely normal for me.

Sounds arrogant doesn’t it? Only at first actually.

Dreams are like that. They come true when what we wish for becomes normal, light as breathing, when we do not attach any cosmic significance to it. When we stop holding it on some throne in our head, a throne we can’t reach and which we silently admire from a distance.

And it’s not just about work, it’s about every segment of life. From love to friendship, travel and big plans, everything is realized when it ceases to be “impossible” and “great”, “unattainable”, “untouchable”.

Dreams on a pedestal

Each of us has something just like that, so beautiful and so big that we can hardly imagine it, and when we give ourselves a little freedom to dream, we quickly warn ourselves, we stop quickly, because… “it is so big that it happens there to someone else people, not us. ” – sounds familiar?

I was like that myself, I kept my dreams on a pedestal and admired them from a distance. I wanted to but I didn’t really dare believe it was possible. I didn’t know then that by raising my dreams on a pedestal I was complicating my life and pushing many, actually simple things by myself. I was like that in relationships, when I believed that some guy was a hit and that it was impossible for him to want me.

Later, when some time had passed and he, by inertia and gravity, fell from that pedestal that he did not even deserve, I would look at him and I would not see anything special anymore. There were times when he would do anything just to make me interesting again, but that wasn’t happening anymore. The magic is gone. Because he was never really that magical, I was the one who gave him all those wonderful qualities. I made him beautiful, special, and unattainable, and he sat on that throne which I had assigned to him, and played the king, until the moment it was no longer given to me, so that he would only fall to the floor, among ordinary mortals.

He would be shocked that he is no longer king, and I would wonder what I actually saw in him?

In those moments, he would have offered me everything that I might have wanted and considered impossible from him until yesterday, but in my eyes it no longer had the same charm. The dream came true, it became normal. And I was already dreaming of something else.

You could say I’m trivializing, but the universe works that way. Everything we wish for is placed in the palm of our hand when it no longer seems abstract to us. When we are ready to believe that it is possible and that it is available to us.

We inflate small, simple things
An ideal example for women is a message from a guy you like, waiting for you, biting your nails while looking at your cell phone and going crazy because there is no message. She’s gone and she’s gone and she’s gone… he hasn’t even read what you wrote him last.

“That arrogant snob!” – everyone thought at least once in their life. Me too. And then at some point I would put down my cell phone and stop looking at it like a sacred relic and wait for the “untouchable Lord” to remember to answer. I would get caught reading, writing, tidying up, calling a friend, or going for coffee. I would do something quite ten and forget that there was some guy there around whom I had been breaking my head until a few minutes ago. And then at some point I would reach for my cell phone because someone would call me and I would realize the message was there. Waiting. She waited for hours and I didn’t even experience it because I lived. Because it lost that weight and importance to me. The message at that moment would again be just a message, and he just an ordinary man, not some God on whose attention my life and mood depend.

We often treat our dreams just like that, like some relics. Like miracles we tremble around until we actually believe it could happen.

We want a big client but we are afraid to send an email to his address. We wish for promotion but are ashamed to talk to superiors. We want to move to another part of the city, but we look at the same streets every day and we don’t even try to flip through the advertisement and see what kind of apartments are being rented.

We want to but we don’t really want to. We dream but we do not believe in those dreams.

Stop being your own cop

When I caught myself criticizing myself in my mind many years ago for the dreams of the first book I had then, I said to myself – enough. It was the first time I had sat down, played Yiruma’s songs that I adore so much, closed my eyes and imagined leafing through my book. I couldn’t imagine the cover in detail, but I grabbed the first book from the shelf, closed it again, and ran my fingers over the spine, across the smooth surface of the cover, leafing through it, absorbing the scent of the book, feeling its weight in my hands. I imagined how I would feel if it was my book and enjoyed that emotion.

I repeated it a mass of times, and last year I held my first book in my hands. It was the same format and weight as the book I had actually fantasized about many times.

When I turn the film backwards, I realize that I imagined many of the “big” things I live in now, listening to my favorite songs and allowing myself to feel the emotions I would feel if I were really experiencing it now. This blog is one such dream, my career, another book, relationships, people, my whole life. All of these were once just ideas, thoughts in the privacy of my mind flying on the waves of my emotions. I would experience them a million times in my mind and feel them for real months and years before they would come true in reality.

That is why I know that what we feel is most important for the realization of all our desires. Whether it’s books, whether it’s jobs, or relationships.

I realize now that before I decided to be in a relationship with a man, I was actually already imagining in my head what it would be like; to make love to him, to talk to him, to date him, to cuddle. And every time I would enter a relationship with such emotion and such ease, the relationship would come true because I didn’t give it too much importance. I didn’t make it difficult, “impossible” with my emotions and movies in my head.

Go with the flow

And that’s exactly what we women do so often. We let our thoughts and analyzes carry us and thus sabotage ourselves. We are carried away by the idea that something has to happen now and we transfer that weight of expectation to the relationship and to the man we like, instead of enjoying the moment, the game of seduction and letting everything develop on its own. Because realistically no man sends you kisses or messages if you don’t interest him. So does it matter how long it took him to answer you? It’s not. So relax. Don’t lift him on a pedestal. Enjoy the moment. Absorb the feeling.

“Can’t stop the feeling” because that creative, fluttering and slightly intoxicating feeling doesn’t need to be stopped. Let it flow and see how the magic happens. Whether it’s a new love, a job, a trip, or a first book.

Allow yourself to dream, even if it has not come true now, even if it has turned into some new dreams and desires. It will give you that zest that makes this life really worth living.