I keep trying to make progress towards my own dreams and I get sidetracked. Sidetracked to work with paying clients, to work on websites that make me money (even though I built them because I loved the content on some and was using to help build my dream.), always sidetracked. Am I still afraid of my own success? My son Daniel stopped letting himself get sidetracked. He wrote and wrote and wrote. And then he died.

I am sitting here watching “Field of Dreams” and I think to myself, who writes this stuff? And I start to cry, because Danny “wrote this stuff”. No, not that movie, he wrote several movies and plays that aren’t so “mainstream”. He had been submitting several to various contests and agents when he died. For a while I got his replies, good and bad reviews. Then others knew he had died, and they just didn’t reply at all. Because for movie scripts and plays, unless the writer is available to write more, an agent won’t work with you. I was told straight out that no one would review his scripts because he wasn’t here to write more.

Maybe I’m afraid that if I realize my dream I will die? No, that’s not it because I am ready for that. My daughter needs me, and my grandson, but they didn’t need me like her brothers did. And both my sons encouraged me to go after my dreams. Danny said I should have a photography gallery. When he was at NYU there was a closed bookstore with great light and windows that he said I should rent. We would laugh about it because NYC rents are incredibly high and there wasn’t any way I could afford it. But he insisted that I should. He was serious. Of course it never happened and after about a year someone rented it and turned it into something. I actually need to go back and see what it became. I haven’t been there in a while.

What is my dream? To have a gallery where I showcase my photography and digital art. And I have started towards that dream. But it is only in the baby stages. It needs much more work and more attention and I have let it slide into the background as I took on more client work. I moved cross country last year about this time. The beginning of August actually. And when I got to my new home I said “I will be able to work more on my dream here”. But renovations and clients and other things took over my time and energy.

So after being distracted for a year it’s time to refocus. I preach it all the time to the people that work with me or work in one of the industries I work in. Focus on selling your designs, your images, your dreams. It’s time for me to do the things on my long term whiteboard, not keep putting them off because of the things on the short term whiteboards.

No, I won’t give up my clients or ignore them, but they can be attended to by other people on my behalf. I need to focus on getting my own body of work up and available and I need to also get Danny’s work up and available. After he died I sent his work out to several people that were going to read it and possibly help me get it “in the right hands” but I guess they were just being polite, since I never heard back from them.

I’m not in a position to produce an independent film so in the coming weeks I will investigate self publishing Danny’s plays and movie scripts, or converting them to a format that can be sold. He had a unique vision, what he wrote is mostly material that I would never even think of. Some of it is very bizarre and may not be what the public will be interested in, or there may be more people than I realize that will appreciate his writing and identify with it in some way.

In any case, keeping it on my computer and my daughter’s computer isn’t fair to Danny. He wrote a lot in his short life and it’s time to get it out where people can appreciate it, discuss it, love it or hate it. I’m actually not too sure how to do that. But I bet I will find a way.