We’re stuck. We’ve never been stuck before. Either he wanted to go to grad school or I wanted to go to Southeast Asia. Never have we been at a loss for what our next big thing would be. But we’re stuck.

Last night I had a dream that there was an apocalypse. People were living indoors. Food and medicine were running low. I knew one place that would still have water, still have food, and safety. My grandpa’s cabin. I moved through the wreckage of the world, people looting, sick people lying in the streets. It was midnight and I hid from the few cars on the roads as I made my way to the forest. I cut through a restaurant at the foot of the hill before heading up to the cabin. The owners knew me, knew my grandpa. As they handed me the spare keys, I remembered and I woke up with a gasp. My grandpa doesn’t live there any more and I wasn’t the one that bought his cabin.

That’s the real life feeling now. The dreams we had planned fell through. We didn’t buy the cabin. Someone else did. My husband’s film didn’t tour to as many festivals as we really thought it might, creating more freelance work for him, the work that he loves. It didn’t happen. The only thing left is my novel. I have such high hopes for it. Six years in the making and I love it like a child. And if it falls too, what then?

Or even if it’s a great success but it takes years to get there. What if it takes time to find an agent, find a publisher, what if they don’t give me enough money to quit my job or what if no one wants to publish it all?  What will we do in the meantime while we’re waiting for our world to change? We don’t know. This was the time when our dreams were meant to start coming true. I’ll be thirty-three next month. It feels like I’ve paid my dues.

But you can’t count on dreams. So we’re starting to figure it out. Yesterday we pulled an old cork board out of the garage and have put it up on a wall in our house. It’s an idea board, to be filled with things that we want for our future.

I saw my husband pinning the first things to it yesterday and I yelled at him. I’d printed two pictures to frame—one of my husband filming some cows in a pasture in New Mexico and another of my grandpa standing and watching those same cows cross the pasture. Together, they made a panoramic of the two men I love, working on a film that I love. But my husband had just poked holes in them, pinning them to the board. He told me I was just going to have to print two more. The originals were dedicated to our future, it’s the image of what he wants our lives to be like.

I like that because I do, too, whatever that means.

This week’s joys:

I found an old frame that I’d bought at a rummage sale years ago that fit perfectly a watercolor print that I bought in Costa Rica last November. It was like they, from two different times and places, were meant to be together.

My husband and I went on a hike yesterday. It was my idea. I wanted to get free of my head-space and be in nature. We decided halfway up the hill that I hate hikes. He said it, but I was thinking it. He told me that he thinks I’m more of a walk girl instead of a hike girl. He’s right and I like that he’s right. We discovered something new about me, or maybe just something that we’re both finally ready to admit. lol

My own novel is starting to seem as exciting to me as The Hunger Games. The characters feel real and the plot thrills me. So cool to be surprised like that with something I wrote.

I talked myself out of a bout of jealousy yesterday by raking and weeding my whole backyard. After scooping up raccoon poop covered in furry, white mold and rotten oranges that the squirrels had thrown out half-eaten, I suddenly felt better about myself, enough to be happy for a friend that deserves the good news that got me down. Life could be worse—I could be mold on raccoon poop but I’m me instead. Sweet deal!

Last week I did more things on my “fun” To Do list than on my actual To Do list. That feels like progress.