All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them

Ever heard of the graduate who couldn’t find a job? Yip, that was me. I, like so many other graduates, was high on knowledge and low on experience which meant finding a job in my chosen career of Industrial Psychology was…well…not happening.

My Dad encouraged (made!) me take a typing course so I could get ‘some kind of a job’ Snort! Me, the GRADUATE, learn to type!?

(yeah yeah I know - that statement ages me terribly, I am THAT old and yet I am so grateful to have wrinkles, many of my beloved friends and family members weren’t lucky enough to live long enough to experience that. But I digress…)

Armed with my typing certificate, I finally managed to secure a job at Penguin Books. As a secretary in the Children’s Marketing Department. Not quite the high powered role I had envisaged but turns out I LOVED it…being surrounded by piles of books, by fascinating projects, by authors – it was like being immersed in a dream world where everything was possible and imagination was prized about all else. I’d spend hours daydreaming about what it would be like to be a Penguin author, surely there could be nothing cooler than that in the whole world!?

Life came along with other plans and that fantasy got tucked away. After all, I couldn’t write and even if I could, what would I write about? But the idea kept tugging at the edges of my waking thoughts and sneaking into my dreams at night.

One day my husband asked me why I talk about being an author one day yet he never sees me writing.

Gulp.

I had to admit he had a point.

(You probably know people like that, people who wax on lyrically about everything they are going to do/be/have in the future and yet never take one.single.step towards that goal)

I took a writing course and started a blog (thank you for reading that blog, I appreciate you!) Just kept chipping away. I wrote my first book and published it myself, yay! An author, go me!

“Well…not quite a published author” the dream reminded me. “Not QUITE.”

I kept writing and dreaming and dreaming and writing. I got mentors to coach me on how to weave a story, how to write more effectively and all importantly, how to manifest magic. It’s true, I have an actual Fairy Godmother – clearly. Dreams like this don’t just come true without stardust and magic.

And then it happened. Yesterday, I signed a publishing contract with PENGUIN BOOKS to publish Bricks for Chicks, a property investing guide for women in South Africa in June 2022. Whoop whoop!

It would have been so easy to give up along the way. It was a passing fad. No one makes money from being an author. If you want to hide a secret, put it in a book. No one reads anymore. Focus on what really matters. Just let it go.

Perhaps this blog is the reminder you need to dust off your withered dreams and give it another shot.

Perhaps it is the opportunity to do some introspection. Are you just talking about an imagined future you not actively co-creating?

Or maybe you are just being caught up in the grind of life, too distracted and far too busy to chase something as intangible as a dream.

Here’s what I know to be true. It is never the actual achievement of the goal that matters. It is who you become in the pursuit of that dream. You literally have to become another person to create another future, a person who takes action, makes different choices, who thrives on learning more and as result, achieves more.

That future you? Just waiting patiently for you to step into your greatness.

I am rooting for you.