It's OK to let your dreams die

Let 'em go out with the tide

I’ve had a recurring dream. I own a spare little cottage near the ocean in mid-coast Maine. It’s a dream I’ve had in some form since I was a kid, from the time I was about 9. It took root the first time I visited my grandparents at the cottage they used to rent back then, walking distance to the crashing Atlantic. I think what drew me to their cottage was its simplicity, size, and sense of order. Not many things, but all in their right places. Calm. Controlled. Contained.

That dream, like a tide, would ebb and flow over the years. For stretches it seemed like the very definition of silly and other times it felt tantalizingly within reach. That’s not to say I worked toward making it a reality like a normal person (saving money, planning) but instead I pursued it through a combination of magical thinking and enjoyable hobbies: wasting the time of real estate agents (and taking advantage of their offers to go out on a boat to look at properties), feverishly collecting nautical art (and housewares and books, textiles and clothes), but mostly by believing how much better my life would be once I secured that cottage. Calm. Controlled. Contained.

Sometimes dreams clear a true path. But sometimes they’re simply a distraction, a way of ignoring your current life in order to form a foothold in an imagined (better) future.

Anyone who has read this newsletter since last October knows that it’s been, let’s say, an interesting ten months for me. As I look back over that time there are so many lessons and insights I’m taking away from it all. But perhaps one of the more jarring realizations is how easy it is to believe in the stories we tell ourselves, even when those stories are in direct opposition, even days apart. This is the true version. No, this is the one to believe in. Wait, this is what that dream meant all along.

For a long time I believed that all of the collecting meant that I was destined to be the kind of person who would one day live the kind of life that naturally included owning a little cottage by the ocean. Nevermind that when I actually dipped my toe into my nautical collection to decorate my office I realized its sheer breadth and was like, dude. If I actually crammed all of this shit into a single small cottage I’d look like an absolute fucking lunatic.

But who hasn’t wandered around on vacation and peered at the listings purposely taped to face out from the local real estate office? We see the views, the possibilities, another life (a happier life, an easier life). What we don't see are the lawsuits over the right of way to the beach, the orange tap water, the paint that gets blasted off every year by the ocean and sand and wind (a regular life, an un-calm, uncontrolled, and uncontained life).

When the lakefront cottage came up earlier this year, I of course saw that as a sign. Oh! I wasn’t meant to own a cottage near the ocean. I was meant to rent a cottage near the lake. I sifted through my crazy-ass assortment of nautical knickknacks to decorate it and are there schooners on Lake Champlain? Man, I don’t think so. But that’s the art I got, baby, so that’s the art that went up.

When I lost the cottage it made me realize how caught up I’d been in reframing my supposed destiny to fit a constantly shifting narrative. Whatever I believed, as soon as the circumstances changed, I was like oh ok well this is what it all means now. Until I realized I was actually … just done. Done with the dream I held in various parts of my heart and my head for over 40 years.

Perhaps the legacy of these past ten months is realizing how easily I’ve bought into the stories I’ve told myself. About who I am and where I’m meant to be, where I’m meant to go. Have I been gaslighting myself my entire life? Have we all? What is true? And what isn’t? And will we ever know? I probably should’ve paid closer attention in Philosophy 101.

This is just a sampling of the things I have fully, completely, would-stake-my-life-on believed at some point over the past ten months:

No one will ever fuck me again, as long as I live. Everyone wants to fuck me, I mean it’s so obvious. Everything is lining up perfectly to sell my book, holy shit. How could I not see that everything was lining up to completely tank my book, holy shit. My body is a decaying bag of old meat, just wet squelching its way toward the grave. My body is beautiful and flexible and smooth and have you seen my legs? Nothing will work out. Everything will be just fine, in fact, way the hell better than fine. I’m incredible and I deserve better. I’m a piece of shit who is getting exactly what she’s deserved all along.

What does any of this have to do with dreams? What does any of this have to do with paintings of the ocean or cottages or anything, really? It’s that sometimes a dream is just another story we tell ourselves, especially if the underpinning of that dream is if/then. If I get this job, get married, write a book, have kids, buy a second home, buy a first home, buy a boat, buy, buy, buy, something, something, something, clean out the garage, clean out the basement, get organized, get a dog, then … I will finally have everything. It will all make sense. And life will be calm. Controlled. Contained.

I’m no longer sure what my one big dream is anymore. It feels like a relief to not know, actually. Maybe it means I’m finally living my life instead of waiting for it to take place somewhere off in the future. There are certainly things I want to do, but I no longer believe in some distant moment when everything will finally fit, when it will all fall into place. Things may never fit, it all may never fall into place. And it feels better than I could’ve imagined to finally let go.

UPDATE #1: Thanks to this newsletter — the only time my aUtHoR pLaTfOrM has proved useful in any real way — I have a new place! It’s better in just about every way than my original plan, I am so lucky. Big giant thanks to Sarah Lyman (one more star in my ever-growing divorce constellation). Check out her business Purpl Couch here. From Seven Days: “[Purpl Couch] is an online divorce resource. Through its first course, Fresh Start, she aims to reframe divorce as a positive experience by offering recorded interviews with local lawyers, counselors and financial advisers, plus other content, such as TED Talks and Spotify playlists. PurplCouch provides its students with the tools necessary to sort out the complicated process while taking a broad look at the culture of divorce.”

UPDATE #2: I will indeed be selling pretty much my entire nautical collection over the next couple of years. I’ll do a more thorough newsletter at some point once I start grouping everything by type but if you’re a collector or seller of nautical items (art, housewares, vintage books, textiles, knickknacks, ships-in-a-friggin’-bottle, you name it, I probably have it) please reach out. Some of the housewares will likely end up at my pal’s new shop GOODS in Camden, Maine! Follow on Instagram here.

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THINGS FROM ELSEWHERE
• This piece has made the rounds many, many times over and with good reason. What a gorgeous piece of writing. “This Old Man: Life in the nineties.” by Roger Angell in The New Yorker. Roger died earlier this year, at the age of 101. An excerpt: “I believe that everyone in the world wants to be with someone else tonight, together in the dark, with the sweet warmth of a hip or a foot or a bare expanse of shoulder within reach. Those of us who have lost that, whatever our age, never lose the longing: just look at our faces. If it returns, we seize upon it avidly, stunned and altered again.”
• This is great advice: “How to take better (and more distinctive) photos on vacation” from NPR. My tip (that I figured out when I was learning on filmcameras) is to make a habit of looking all around the edges and background of the shot before taking it. Often we’re so laser-focused on the subject that we don’t register everything else that might be going on within the frame, cluttering up the background, etc. Ok a couple more: Always look around (up, to the side, behind you) and sometimes you find the better shot than what’s dead ahead. And never trust that a moment (or a certain quality of light) will last. If something captures your attention, take the pic ASAP. It will change faster than you think … and you can’t go back (just like life!)
• Helloooooo everyone: “How Americans Became Convinced Divorce Is Bad for Kids” by Gail Cornwall and Scott Coltrane in Slate. “A careful review of academic research—and the historical and cultural context in which it was conducted— [show that] most of the problems associated with being a child of divorce are instead related to sexism, racism, homophobia, shoddy recordkeeping, and insufficient government support.” and “In a 2003 paper, Paul Amato of Penn State created an index of overall psychological well-being and concluded that the overlap between adults with and without divorced parents was 90 percent, meaning only about 10 percent of those with divorced parents had more mental health issues and reported lower life satisfaction and happiness than those with married ones. Almost half, 42 percent, exceeded the average well-being score of the married parents sample.” aaaaand “As a result of the way the Christian right was able to frame—and effectively close—the policy debate, national solutions have focused on individuals’ decisions and bolstering the institution of marriage: Choose the right spouse. Go to couples therapy. All but ignored is the government’s opportunity and obligation to families. And that disproportionately affects women, Black families, and lower-income kids and caregivers.”

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You can find my books here. You can find my writing here. You can find my copywriting and creative direction work here. You can find me on Twitter. You can find me on Instagram. Please do not find me in real life unless, you know, you fit this description 😏 Hey, it worked for finding an apartment!