The Dreamer's Guide to the Galaxy

It's my hope this guide will help you hold onto your dream and your hope as you voyage into strange new worlds.

Fellow creative, you and I both know that pursuing a dream is no small thing. Sure, in the beginning it feels exhilarating. It’s like the dream arrives on our hearts in the form of a postcard and says “Look at this, isn’t it magical? Oh, do come away and visit!” We think, ‘Of course! That place looks incredible! Imagine the possibilities!’ So, we hop in our moon buggy and decide to go after it.

Except, the place advertised on the postcard doesn’t exist yet. We, the dreamer, have to make it so. The postcard also forgot to mention the landscape between us and the image we saw is treacherous: filled with broken roads, sinking sand, Rodents of Unusual Size, tracks that lead nowhere, and an astonishing lack of navigations. Plus, you have to drive using your feet like Fred Flintstone. Oh and worst of all? The buggy’s radio is broken.

But travel anyway, we must. Because dreams are necessary. Both for us, and the people who will be impacted by our dream becoming a reality. Like Superman says: “Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us.” When we don't have a vision ahead of us to reach for, (whether big, small or tiny-big), it's easy to stay stuck and stagnant.

I’ve wandered this terrain as a dreamer so long the Sandworms have accepted my presence as no threat and I basically have the feet of a hobbit. Throughout the years I’ve scribbled thoughts into various notebooks and now have compiled them here, for you: The Dreamer’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It is my hope it will it help you hold onto your dream and your hope as you voyage into strange new worlds.

Backing you,

K x

I feel the terms ‘dreamer’ and ‘creative’ are synonymous. If you create, you’re dreaming. If you dream, you’re creating. Both are a kind of Reality Wizard as they pull from the invisible realms things that don’t yet exist and turn nothingness into something. If you recognise yourself in this definition then this is for you.

Perhaps we start there? As you see things that are not there. You, my friend, are equal parts madness and magic. But because of this, your voyage across this landscape will, at times, be lonely. You will also have moments where you wonder that maybe they’re right after all and you are actually crazy…? In this second as you reach for the vegan ice-cream in the fridge and commit yourself to a full week Netflix binge, know this: you’re not mad. It’s part of your magic. All dreams come with at least 3 legs of travel where you look like you’ve lost the plot. Keep going. Rest. Then get back in your damn moon buggy and keep plodding.

It does, however, limit who you can talk to or share the journey with. There might not be anyone in your life, family or friends who understand your dream postcard or even acknowledge it. This doesn’t make it any less real and it doesn’t mean these people aren’t wanting to support you.

You’re in it on your own. (But you’re not alone.)

The vision is yours. You’re the only one who can see it. We can see it a little bit, and the right people who are meant to partner with you in it and come along for the journey, will see it enough to be able to jump in the buggy behind you.

However, even if you recreated what you see with Ultra 4K SuperBright 3000 AI or whatever future tech they bring out, that generated image will be presented snipped from the cords attached to you. Which is why when you share it, the response can sometimes be underwhelming. It’s not that people don’t want to be excited about your ideas or escapades, it’s that they can’t see them as they are meant to be seen.

It’s what’s within you that powers the bulbs which illuminate hidden things. It’s not for us to see until it’s here, with us.

This doesn’t mean you’re alone, though. The radio may be broken but your moon buggy does come equipped with crystal clear signal to other buggies on similar voyages. The drivers all have free access to the channels and can share the journey alone, but together.

Never actually alone. Not actually crazy. Off to a pretty good start.

Keep those communication channels sacred, however. Don’t share them with onlookers, spectators or judicators. You must, must, must protect your energy and confidence.

Be careful who you share your dream with.

When I was pursuing acting, I worked side jobs in retail or hospitality. Often I'd find myself in conversations with customers who wanted to know what I was doing at uni or what I wanted to do "one day.”

When I’d respond with ‘I want to be an actor.’ I'd get some variant of: "Oh ok. That's great. I guess you can say when it doesn't happen, at least you tried."“What are you going to do when that doesn’t work out?”“But what are you going to do to put dinner on the table?!”

So I started giving them fake answers like: marine biologist or journalist or teacher. Just anything normal or '“acceptable.”It was just easier and protected my heart. It took too much energy to explain it to them and then try and build my own confidence back up for my own dream.

Don't tell everyone your dreams or plans. Not everyone has earned the right to hear them. Can that person be trusted? Will they support you or diminish you? Will they cost you brave/confidence dollars? Remember, these are the hardest “dollars” to earn back. Sometimes it’s just not worth it.

Pursuing creative dreams aren’t just scary for us, they’re scary for others. This is because they’re either:

a) Afraid for us.

b) Afraid for themselves.

(Sometimes, people can even be a mixture of the two.)

Afraid for us:

When they’re afraid for us this means they are genuinely concerned we’re setting ourselves up for heartbreak and/or a lifetime of eating sandwiches for dinner. They love us and they want to see us set up for the best future possible. They might try and send us job opportunities, hold confronting conversations over tea and cake, and sometimes they have a good point and we would do well to listen.

When they do diminish either our talents or our dream, it’s done accidentally and because they simply don’t understand, and remember, can’t see what we see.

For all the above reasons and more, these lovely people tend to say dumb things to dreamers, and our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to try not to say dumb things back. Godspeed.

Afraid for themselves:

When they’re afraid for themselves, it’s perhaps because they feel threatened, jealous or offended. This can show up in many ways: stealing or copying our work or things that are important to us, diminishing our gifts and ideas on purpose and at times outright sabotaging our efforts.

Bleak, right? Allow me to introduce you to the Rodents of Unusual Size. Oh, yes. If you venture into unchartered dreamscape lands, you will encounter them. They will do what they can to thwart you so that it doesn’t make them feel bad about themselves. Sometimes they can be random internet people, or even harder to tolerate is in our own families and friendship circles.

At the heart of it, it’s sad, right? ROUS’s after all, are probably just heartbroken, deeply afraid dreamers. Dreamers that gave up somewhere along the way and couldn’t go back to where they started so succumbed to the elements of the land and evolved into these aggressive, bitey creatures.

When you do come across one on your journey, be wary and avoid but don’t injure them any further. After all, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether they’re simply looking out for us or not. And honestly? Even if they’re not on our side, at this point they’ve probably gone through enough.

Puzzle pieces & buggy buddies.

Sometimes, you might see someone else on the same road as you and your heart drops through the floor of your buggy as you think: ‘Oh no. They got the same postcard I did. They’re going to get there better and faster than I am...’

But the truth is that the image you received on your postcard is like the image on a puzzle box: it’s made up of hundreds or even thousands of pieces. You carry one of them. They carry another. Your vision and dream might look similar, but it is not the same and the overall picture won’t be complete without your piece. That other buggy is your buddy on the journey, not a thief. You might even need each other. Open the channels with them, chat. Connect. Talk about the picture you both see and see if your pieces fit together.

The zeitgeist is real. The word translates to “time” and “spirit”, and the "spirit of the time" is what's going on culturally, religiously, or intellectually during a certain period. It’s important (even though not always easy) to distinguish the copycats from the other creatives simply listening, beating away to the spirit of the time along with us.

Be brave enough to be bad at the beginning.

The chances are your dream involves a lot of learning, and you might even have to start at the beginning. Which means, you’re probably going to have to start out less than great, or even really bad at it first. Most likely for longer than you want to be. Give yourself the space, time and freedom to fail. Be brave enough to be bad at something you care about.

Those dance classes you’ve dreamed about giving a go? Have you stopped yourself from signing up because you’re afraid you won’t be any good at it? You probably won’t be. Sign up anyway. Be happy to shuffle along like one of those wind noodles for a good while before your body connects to your brain. Being bad in the beginning doesn’t mean you’re not capable of it, it means you’re new. Give your body a chance to pick it up.

It’s the same for any kind of dream. Be brave to be bad. So, so bad if need be. Wave your arms around like that wind noodle with pride. Look at you go.

Building from your buggy.

The dream gets made by taking steps where you are, with what you have. That book on your heart and scribbled about through post-it notes and WhatsApp messages gets written one sentence at a time. Usually in the dark, cold hours of the morning, while you’re hungry and could really do with a second coffee but you’re trying to cut back and your chair isn’t as comfy as you’d like but you’ll deal with that later because you’ve got to keep your eye on the time knowing you can’t be late for your “real” job another day this week.

It happens like that. Unglamorous, uncomfortable, awkward.

The podcast you want to start is waiting for you to grab your phone—not a fancy new microphone—to just get it started. Your audience isn’t going to know. You don’t need SFX or music to get started if it’s going to mean you never get started.

I know we want it to feel like the movie montages and we’re waiting for our music to start and become a raging success overnight with fabulous new hair. But as hard as it is to believe, the movies are lying to us.

It’s a long trek. Pack something to do.

Generally speaking, dream-chasing takes forever. There’s a lot of waiting around and wrong turns and feeling like we’ve gone backwards. This is harder to deal with because, to us, the vision feels so real, therefore it seems like it should be so close and easy to get to.

This is why having more than one dream isn’t a bad plan. I used to think having a back up plan was essentially admitting my dream would fail, so I refused to pursue anything else for a long time. Ultimately, I think it made my journey harder. While it’s not so much a regret, I do think it would have served me to pursue another dream like interior design or floristry. If I'd had a job working as a designer or florist and going to auditions on the side, I would have found the journey easier on my heart and I would have had a (paid) outlet for my creativity and skills. (That being said, in my case I also had lots of personal stuff going on with homelessness and drama and #lyfestuff. So, I probably didn't have the capacity or stability to pursue more than one thing.)

While I don’t regret going after acting with my whole heart, (in many ways it saved me while in some of those darker times), my advice now to a dream chaser would be to pursue more than one dream, not in case of failure, but to make the trek more enjoyable.

The quiet times.

There might be times we drop a dream. We might be disappointed or disillusioned by a setback and need some time to re-calibrate. We might be losing hope and wanting to shut it down. Or we’re just hungry.

It’s ok to stop and rest. Make sure you're doing what you need to look after the heart and the body of the dreamer, or the dream will likely wilt. If the lack of 'zing' continues and you’re truly no longer energised by it, then maybe it's your heart telling you there's something else it wants to seek out. It could be that that dream served its purpose for a time and something new will come up for us if we stay open to it.

Yes, there is always a new dream. A new beginning. It just might take some brave dollars to let yourself dream again.

Not sure what you want to do? Lost your spark? Feeling a bit blah around the edges? You're human. We all feel like that at times. You're not broken or lost.

One of the loveliest things my fiancé said to me when I was in a similar place was to follow the breadcrumbs. Just take one step at a time, follow the breadcrumbs in front of you and see where they lead. A breadcrumb could be an opportunity of some kind, an open door, a hand outstretched by a friend offering help or support, an idea that you could flesh out and so on. Remember, breadcrumbs are tiny and missable, easily trodden on as we walk ahead, keep an eye out for them.

You are not your dream.

You are not the title of your job or dream. It’s what you do, it might even be what you’re known for, but it is not who you are. Knowing your identity is separate to your dream makes it so much easier in the ups and downs of the journey, or when heartbreak shows up. If it fails, you are not a failure. Maybe you’ve just hit a speed bump and got thrown out of the buggy for a bit, shake the moon dust off your derrière and get back on the road.

Or, maybe that dream took you as far as it was meant to.

Maybe the picture you saw originally was actually just the first part, or the part you need to chase first in order to find the next part of the picture. Like an infinitely zooming image: but a dream inside a dream inside a dream.

This is why we hold onto your dreams, but we hold the outcome lightly.

Pursue whatever is on your heart to pursue, but know it’s just a vehicle that carries you somewhere and you get to direct it. You choose where to go. It doesn’t run, drive or push you around. You can hop out any time you’d like and choose a different buggy if you want to.

The journey changes the dreamer and as a result, dreams change. This is not failure. You weren’t wrong or “crazy after all” to pursue your dream in the first place.

One day, years ago now I was explaining to my son how I think I might like to do more than acting. He said to me: “Of course! You're so much more than just an actor, mum. You're not a one-trick acting pony."

Was I? Was I so much more than just an actor? It took me a while to unravel that role or dream from my identity. I didn’t know who I was without acting. I had made that part of my identity and the thing I presented to the world of who I was.

But I was more. I’d just put myself into a box and once I finally ripped the label off the box I started to realise there was so many other dreams and stories within me. Pursuing acting was only the first part. It led me to many places and people, and now, it’s led me here, with you.

Don’t let your dream define you or hold too tightly to how it should all look when you reach it. Be open to where the dream actually takes you.

Finally, if you hear nothing else from this guide, hear this: If there's a dream on your heart, it's there for a reason. You've got gifts, talents and skills for a purpose. Your dreams are real, valid and worth pursuing. Guard the dream, guard your heart, and guard your hope.

Onwards,

Was this helpful? Are you in a moon buggy on your way to your dream too?

Just as a bonus, I’ve also turned this post into a free downloadable booklet, it will be sent to you automatically when you subscribe. (Current subscribers, I’ve added it into our chat for you.)