Preparing for the Vulnerability Hangover

Hello, fellow actual humans! I appreciate you being here.

For a long time, I've been told that I should write. A book, a blog, a note on a napkin that's much too fancy for someone with my lack of demure. Well, I'm here, and I'm about to take a run (well, a wheel) at it.

When I was little, I would write stories and scripts aplenty for my younger cousins and I to "perform" at family gatherings. It was the 90's and I'm reasonably certain that my dad has still has racks full of VHS home videos in the basement of my family home. I still appreciate the heavy lifting his right shoulder had to do to support the camcorder for the capture of these "masterpieces". Word on the street is that I acted like a bit of a child-mogul though. One year on Boxing Day after spending several hours in the green room (aka my grandparents' bathroom) I cast my three-year-old cousin as... a rock. She laid still under a black blanket for nearly the entirety of the production, because she couldn't read a script. In my mind it isn't coded as me being a cutthroat director — I just wanted her to be included.

Fast forward to now, and I've yet to lose my thirst for creativity. Maybe she's born with it — maybe it's unbridled neurodiversity. I would not then (and will not now) give up my "wild imagination" for anything.

Life on earth is more than a little bit of a wild ride lately. While I recognize that I am wildly privileged in a number of ways, in my particular corner of the world everything seems more expensive than ever, people are working multiple jobs just to get by, food insecurity and mental health issues are at an all time high, and [she breaks the fourth wall to give global politics a serious side-eye]. This concoction of seemingly impossible circumstances drives me one of two ways — visioning, or spiralling.

As a millennial with a shiny new ADHD diagnosis, I'm no stranger to a good little spiral — especially if it helps to move stuck energy, or release our emotions. But, leaning toward the opposite pole, there really isn't much that makes me happier in life than gel pens and a new planner. Dear reader: I know you're screaming "don't do it! It'll be a paperweight within weeks!" but hear me out.

This one in particular invites you to list 50 of your dreams. Yeah, I know. FIFTY.
I decided that my approach would be one of appreciating some of the big dreams in life that I've already accomplished, as I look forward to my hopes for what the future could be.

And you know what? That exercise taught me a lot.

Sitting with myself long enough to list fifty dreams — no matter big, small, lofty, or silly — felt like a real gift. It felt like that cliche I hate about learning to be your own best friend, but it also felt like an exercise in rooting back into myself, too.

I started with the big ones:
- Swim with Dolphins. Check.
- See Taylor Swift in Concert. Check.
- See RENT on Broadway before it closes. Check.

This caused me to reflect on the moments that I'm grateful to have experienced thus far, and the people who helped make them possible and shared them with me.

I added some practical ones – about finances, career, and advocacy.

and then it happened — an absolutely bananas by any other standards, utterly out of this world if this were to be my life kinda dream came flying out of left field and into my consciousness, and my heart made a seat for her on the couch like "well, DUH!" .... I uncapped my gold and silver gel pens and popped her RIGHT to the bottom of the list — number 50. While it's wildly unlikely that I'll achieve this entire list chronologically (if at all) placing the literal wildest dream at the bottom somehow felt safer to me.

Hey, so y'know that ADHD girlie I mentioned earlier with the penchant for gel pens and dreaming perhaps a little too big for her wheelchair-friendly britches?

It turns out that she does really well with some accountability.

So I'm here. I'm writing. I don't yet know where it will take me — but I am prepared for the vulnerability hangovers that will come as I share my list of dreams with you — what I've learned, what I'm in the middle of learning, what I'm excited about — and what is yet to come.

Heck, maybe you'll feel inspired to write your own list of 50 dreams!

When the world is on fire, what could it hurt?

Armed with the barf bucket of my own desires,

Jen