Stairway To Heaven

Last night I had one of the craziest, scariest, most realistic dreams I have ever had.

In the dream, I was in the middle of a big open field that was completely empty except for a single flight of stairs going up. Naturally, a mysterious flight of stairs in the middle of nowhere is too tempting for someone as nosy as me to resist, so I started climbing up. I climbed and climbed until the railings disappeared and I was just surrounded by clouds. I looked further up and saw that the stairs led to a giant slide even higher up in the sky.  Like the stairs, it had no railing and was surrounded by nothing but clouds, nothing to protect you from falling right off. It was at that moment that I realized I wasn't the only one there. I was surrounded by people and they were all falling off, either on the stairs or the slide. People fell right past me and I could actually hear the woosh sound they made as they passed by my ears and a sickening thud as they hit the ground. Terrified,  I decided I wasn't curious about the stairs anymore and I wanted to turn around and climb back down. But I couldn't. As I had climbed up each stair it disappeared, leaving me with a steep drop-off and absolutely no way to back down. As it continued to rain people around me, I sat down the step I was on, paralyzed with fear. Do I give up? Do I risk climbing all the way up only to fall off?

Luckily, my alarm woke me up before I had to make the decision, my jaw aching and my mouth covered in gritty tooth fragments, a sure sign I'd been grinding my teeth in my sleep yet again. My stomach was still in knots and my mind was still just as full of "what ifs" as it had been when I went to bed. The question in my head remained; How can I possibly pull this off? 

But, as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's back up a bit.

A few weeks ago I was on Facebook and I noticed that TOMS shoes was holding a contest called Books For Bloggers. Their Chief Shoe Giver (AKA founder) Blake Mycoskie recently wrote a book called "Start Something That Matters" and they wanted someone to review it, someone who not only blogged, but was also trying to start something of their own (be it a business, organization, non-profit or whatever). To enter, I had to write about what it was I was trying to create as well as why my blog would be a good place to post the review. So not only did I have to articulate what it was I was trying to accomplish (when I'm still not entirely sure what it is) but I also had to talk myself up. A lot. And for someone who has a blog dedicated to basically writing about their life, I really, really suck at talking about myself.


Not only that, but I'm really picky about what I have to say and how I choose to say it. I edit and revise to the point of driving myself insane. In fact, the very words you are reading right now have been read over and over until I was practically cross-eyed. I really can't say why, but the day I decided to enter the TOMS contest, I just sat down and wrote. And wrote and wrote. I didn't create a word document to save and revise (and obsess over). For once in my life I just wrote without consciously thinking about what I was writing, like my fingers on the keyboard were a separate entity from the rest of my body. I was inspired, sure, but I somehow managed to get out of my own head for a change, and if you've known me for longer than five minutes, you know what an amazing thing that is.

But here's the thing. Everyone and their mother is on Facebook holding different contests every day, and they all manage to fly under my radar. This one felt like a hand reached out of my computer and slapped me across the face. Not to sound like a total crazy person, but it felt like it was created to motivate me.

As you might recall, in my last blog, I wrote about our book club and how, while it's a really fun, social thing to do, I want to turn it into something bigger and more meaningful and I've spent the last few weeks obsessing over how to do that. The contest caught my attention because I love the story behind TOMS shoes, love that it was created by a young college dropout who yes, wanted to start a successful business, but also genuinely wanted to help out others. At the core of my motivation to enter was pure curiosity at how this guy managed to pull it all off. In other words, I probably would have bought the book anyway, but the contest gave one away for free, and free is always good. Plus, if I won, it might be good publicity for both my cause and blog. I figured I had nothing to lose except actually losing the contest and since I didn't even tell anyone I entered, no one would know I lost.


And then, amazingly, I won. 


My first reaction was to say "I never win anything!" which is true, technically, but the truth is, I never win anything because I never enter anything. That's right, you heard it here first. I'm a big fat chicken.


Which brings us back to the dream. How lame am I that I freeze up with fear in my own dream? I mean come on, we can do anything in our dreams. We can fly in our dreams if we wanted to. So why didn't I? Generally, I try not to read too much into dreams, but this one feels different. I've already mentioned that I tend to let fear get the best of me (see above re: big fat chicken) and I don't want to (and can't) let it get the best of me now. 

Winning this contest is a huge eye-opener for me. I want to be a writer and this project has great potential for exposure to my blog, but even more than that it's motivated me keep trying to find my greater purpose in life, which I've blogged about a lot this past year. I feel like I have great ideas, I just need the courage to share them. More than that, I need the courage to realize that not everything I do has to be perfect and not everyone will like whatever it is I hope to accomplish. Not being liked is inevitable, but it's so much easier in theory than when someone isn't liking something you believe in. Failure is always an option, lurking in the dark corners of my brain with its buddy Fear, and the two of them constantly team up to try to tell me that I can't do this. I don't have time. I don't have resources. I have no clue what I'm doing. There are a million other things I should be focusing on. It doesn't help that all of these things are true.


I have no idea to overcome fear. Like grinding my teeth at night, it's something that I really don't want to be doing, but have no clue about how to stop. I guess for now I can only hope that, unlike my dream, I don't freeze up in real life. All I know right now is that I have to keep climbing the stairs even when, especially when, I feel like I'm about to fall off.