Keep The Dream Fires Burning

It’s easy to let dreams die, Modern Philosophers.

That’s just a basic truth.  Dreams need to be fueled with the fires of passion, hard work, commitment, and maybe even a little blind faith and dumb luck.

The saying is “Chase your dreams”, not “Sit and wait for your dreams to come to you” for a reason.  If you give up the pursuit, your dreams will run off without you.

This is a concept that that consumes a high ratio of my Deep Thoughts.  I’ve made no secret that my dream is to be able to write full time.  I’ve never given up on that dream, even when it’s seemed like it was never going to come true.

Sure, I don’t chase it as hard at times.  There are extended periods when the only fuel I ever toss on the dream fire is a handful of rejection letters.

But I never let the fire burn out completely.

To that end, I continue to plug away on my novel.  This idea, inspired by a short story on my blog, has now grown into twenty-chapters of story.  It’s gotten to the point now that my regular Sunday short story characters, Aaron and Holly, are about to make an appearance.

I’m building a crossover world from my blog, and I’m totally excited about it.  I never knew that a 1,500 word blog post would expand into something like this, but trying to produce my first novel has definitely kept the full time writing dream alive.

This past week, I put together a proposal for a Nite Show spinoff podcast, which I presented to Danny, The Nite Show’s host and producer.  We’ve tossed around the idea of a podcast for some time, and I finally came up with an idea that really excites me.

Being able to write, produce, and host a podcast would really throw plenty of fuel on my full time writing dream fire.

Today, though, really gave me hope.  As I’ve mentioned, I decided to take the bull by the horns and create my own TV series.  I wrote an entire season of ten episodes, got some interest from a producer friend in LA, but then was approached by a local network about producing the Pilot in Maine.

How cool would it be to make my dream project in my adopted home state?  I’m pretty sure that would be wicked awesome…

Then COVID hit, the world shut down, and nothing happened.  About a month ago, I reached out to the TV Exec who I met about the project.  He got back to me to say he was still interested.  That got me excited.

Then, as things tend to go in this business, I heard nothing for a month.  I sent a follow up email without a reply.  For a moment, I felt the dream take a turn for the worse.  Not yet dying, but perhaps being on the path to hospitalization.

I mean, there are only so many times that I can get my hopes up, only to see them crushed.

I checked my email at lunch today, and there was one from the TV Exec.  Things had taken a step forward with the project.  It’s not enough to get wild about, but it was definitely progress and some much needed positive news.

Enough to keep me walking on air all day.

So I head into the long holiday weekend with renewed hope.  It’s actually somewhat chilly tonight in Maine, but I don’t mind because my dream fire is blazing and keeping me warm.

And I know that I will never let that dream fire die.

What do you do to stoke your dream fire and keep it burning?