Last week I wrote a post called Are You a Dream Weaver or a Dream Leaver and I stirred some dream dust up out there. I love to rankle, because it’s the poke in the ribs that gets us moving towards our sizzley-but-scary goals… not so much the warm hug from a well-meant friend who says, “it’s okay to shelve your dreams, Sweetie! I know it’s hard. Let’s refill our mimosas.” There will be no shelving of dreams on my watch! (But I will have another mimosa with you.) We will take purposeful, courageous action towards our dreams—that’s what we’re going to do. And you know how we do that?

How Much Longer Are You Going to Wait? More poking.

I’m going to ask this question with 88% care + concern and 12% sass + snark:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
(The sass + snark seemed like more than 12% there and I’m only a little bit sorry about that.)

Said differently, HOW MUCH LONGER ARE YOU GOING TO WAIT TO START LIVING LIKE YOU MEAN IT?

Another year?
After two more emails that need answering?
After the last kid goes off to college?
After you retire?
After you feel good about the way you look in your favorite suit again?
After you begin to feel confident?
After you get that latest certification in a long line up of educational pursuits that are really just delaying your dreams?
After you find love?
After you get settled in your new place?
After you get your laptop and tech stuff worked out, once and for all? (Hahaha, keep waiting for that day, I dare you.)
After you find your god?
After you network just a bit more in your industry?
After you kick that persnickety-persistent Adderall habit?
After you’ve delivered 10 more keynotes?
After things slow down a bit at work?
After you exhaustively research all the types of LLC’s and get your business set up “the right way”?
After you pay down your debt?
After you organize the drawers and cupboards in your office?
After you get a ring light?
After the current administration changes?
After you befriend Reece Whitherspoon (who will then select your book for her book club)?
After you get that prostate thing looked at?
After you pay down more of the mortgage? (OMG this is the exact story of the Uber driver, Merriman, who just took me to the airport; when he was first married he and his wife skipped vacations for five years so they could make extra house payments, just to be responsible. And then she got a brain tumor and died. In her early 20s. This man, this dear sweet man, from the perspective of being 77 years old, told me he deeply regretted “she never got a vacation.” I can’t even handle this story.)
After things “die down” out there?

The only thing that might “die down” is you, Little Miss/ Mr. Perishable. Or even worse: you might keep living, and your dreams become the casualties of your Chickenheartedness.

That sounded judgey and it is here that I must share I am a part-time resident of Camp Chickenhearted. I am so scared of my goals and dreams and plans and it’s only because I slap myself in the face with a healthy dose of mortality reality that I take any action at all. I am simply overriding my innate tendency to play it safe/ shelve my dreams/ snuggle deeper under the comfy fleece blanket on the couch… I am consciously overriding my chickenhearted nature with this memento mori ethos (remembering I will die).

And it works.

What dreams are you postponing? And how much longer are you going to wait to go after them?

It’s not going to get easier by waiting. It will likely only get harder (because you will maybe get more rigid in your ways/ feel more submissive to fear/ get glaucoma/ die).

Today is all you have. Odds are you have tomorrow too, but why not make today a day that counts?

Thanks to my Aunt Mary for sending me this most excellent meme:

Yeah this meme is so true it hurts