Making Dreams Real: Too Many Rubber Chickens

A friend once remarked to me, "My problem is that I'm juggling too many balls. Or maybe rubber chickens." She and I met while working as staff assistants at an elementary school. We both had full-time jobs, young children, spouses who also worked as school assistants (read: forget about "staying home" or even cutting back to part-time), and were, against all odds, persistently trying to further our far-off dreams. She was an actress in community theater and circus productions (hence the juggling metaphor) before having kids. I'd given up trying to keep a writing & editing business afloat. Both of us acutely felt the absence of something crucial in our lives, something that no amount of work or family satisfaction could replace.

I decided to start writing again even if I couldn't find markets for my material. She decided to start teaching acting classes for neighborhood children in her basement. We agreed to be each others' cheerleaders. Over the course of the year, we encouraged each other to keep at it. Neither of us made enormous strides towards our goals that year but it was the keeping up that counted.

When you have too many rubber chickens in the air, you might have to scale down on personal projects for awhile but it's critical that you don't give them up entirely. Even if you can only write for 20 minutes on Saturday night just before falling into bed, or you can only sing in the car as you drive to work, or you only take one decent photo a week, it's vital to keep your passion alive. Having even a tiny bit of time that you look forward to every week can keep you slogging along through work, bills and obligations. And the stronger the connection to the passion inside you, the more energy you'll have for every other area of life.

Making Dreams Real - The 5-Minute Fix

You don't need enormous swathes of time to do something you've been dying to try. In my experience it's only possible to work steadily on a long-haul project such as writing a novel if you train yourself to accept small amounts and accomplishments. Believing that you have to free up entire 2-hour blocks of time to accomplish anything might scare you into doing nothing at all.

Take a project you're working on and see if you can find ways to fit it into your life as it is, not how you wish it could be. Can you do anything in 5-10 minutes? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? What about while you're waiting in line, sitting on a bus or driving home from work? If you're a parent who spends 90% of her day running carpools, is there something you can do while you wait for kids?

Try fitting a tiny part of your dream into a corner of your day.