Wide awake, dreaming

Image credit: basicallybekah

I’m not sure how to tell you what I’ve been up to these last few days, because it feels both small and big. (Yes, there’s been some packing, but our moving date has been pushed back a week or two,  so I have a little breathing room there…)

Last week, I signed up with a songwriting forum and jumped with both feet into the pool of this little dream I’ve had for a long time. I’ve been writing lyrics for years, but never did anything with them until now. (Just as well, since most of what I used to write should stay tucked away inside a binder.)

On songwriting forums, there are places to post one’s lyrics for review, so I posted the one that you’ve seen here*, and a few others. I dusted off and finished a couple of songs that were in my old files, and I’ve written a new one.

One forum led to another, and I’ve met some great, talented people in both places.

When I have more to tell (or for you to hear…fingers crossed, both hands, tightly), you’ll be the first to know. Or the second. Okay, at least third, I promise.

A lot of people have been doing this for years, but the chance to write songs with other songwriters is new to me and so exciting – and that’s the part that feels huge. Hearing music with words that I’ve written or collaborated on.  I know now that it can happen, soon or not so far off. Ten years ago, I don’t now that I would have had the nerve to even walk into this party where I don’t know anyone, in a world that’s so unfamiliar to me. But now, after seeing that what I thought were impossible things are possible, it’s so exhilarating. Just being around this kind of creative, positive energy has changed my outlook so much. There’s so much for me to learn, and it will take time. But I’m in a good place to learn from others and to be part of something that makes my heart beat a little faster.

It stuns me that, for so long, I didn’t realize that maybe the biggest step I might take was just asking to be let into the party.

Once I did that, I was met with so much generosity and encouragement. Like I asked the Universe for something, and it went into the back room and brought it right out for me. (Trust me when I tell you that’s not how it usually goes.)

My friend Suzanne at A View From Table One wrote a post a couple of days ago about that feeling of waiting for one’s life to begin, and about the moment she realized that “we have not understood that our lives have begun.” She continues, “That moment that we are waiting for is already here, we are living it now in this moment and all our plans are part of that life that has already begun. We must stop waiting and start doing.”

If I hadn’t already taken a couple of steps toward something I want, those two sentences would have kicked me in the ass, for sure. Even so, they still resonate within me, like echoes of thunder from a storm that’s just (finally) starting to move on.

And that’s how this feels. Things are brighter. The air is clean.

And I swear to god, I hear music.

_______________________

*the password for that post is thursday, if you need it

Tagged as: dreams, music, songwriting