What was, or is, your dream career?

My ‘Dream Job’ has always been to be an author (of children’s stories). But pursue that dream as hard as I might…. It hasn’t happened for me, not yet anyway. In fact the pursuit of my dream has caused me a great deal of sorrow and heartache. For me it was my way to change the world, make a difference. I so passionately believed with all my heart and soul that THIS was my life’s purpose.
It seemed perfectly natural, I trained as a teacher, loved kids and so wanted them to have a different childhood than I had. So I wrote story after story and got rejection after rejection. All the while telling myself that I needed to have faith and believe.
If you dream it, you can be it!
If you truly give it all you have, you can achieve anything!
Dreams really do come true.
If you follow your passion you can’t go wrong.
Things happen in God’s time.

Each rejection I took as an opportunity to grow, so I would try something else, improve on what I had written. I sought professional help and got a few stories edited and evaluated- just in case they were being rejected because they were in actual fact….. just not very good. (You do have to face that at some point) I got a glowing review for one of them at least… but still no offers from publishers. This game went on for years…. Write a story….. wait months for a reply…. Send it off…..wait for a reply.
How long do you pin your hopes on a dream that just doesn’t seem to be working out? How long is ‘God’s time’? When do you give up on a dream? Am I on the right path? These are all questions I began to ask myself last year. Rejection after rejection, had made me face the fact that maybe I was wrong after all.
Then, with a lot of unpleasant stuff going on my life- yet another ‘sorry’ letter arrived in my letterbox. This was the last straw and I ‘Spat the dummy!’ I put all of my writing in a box and there it has stayed.

‘I need something new in my life’ I decided. Perhaps it was time to let the universe direct the flow of my life. But there was no reply from the universe, no flow, just nothingness! Months of nothingness!
I had never felt so lonely in all my life, so utterly empty.
What do you do when you don’t have a dream?
Where do you go when the universe doesn’t flow?
I fell into a big black hole and couldn’t see the light.
It has been a long climb out of the hole I found myself in. There is a lot of time to think, in the stillness and dark. I learned a lot……….
I don’t have to BE anything, just me. I don’t need a title or a label to make me happy, or proud and it is OK just to BE ME. The most important place to BE is in the here and now, not off in some wonderful future.
I just watched the movie ‘Evan Almighty’ with my daughter a few days ago and one thing really struck me…. ARK- Acts of Random Kindness. This is how God told Evan he could ‘change the world’, by one random act of kindness at a time.
Be the change.
At times I really think that the name I chose is a bit lame,(Dragonfly Dreamer) but every time I think of changing it, I remember why I chose it in the first place- just to keep the possibility alive.
With a glimmer of hope and a sprinkle of magic, who knows what might happen?
The future is after all… ours to create.