Dreaming is free

Awake from one of those dreams that seems at the time to be a life-changer, but too tired to fully wake up and actually start changing my life, I am thinking instead of the paths I walked to get here, listening to a soundtrack of trains, and thinking about the things that are calling me to stay. Two decades ago, Detroit was a dream to me. In fact, it was on the verge of a trepidation. I was living in Norfolk, a small Southern city, and Detroit was nothing but a blip on the distant radar screen. But the terribly rainy night in the summer of '96, rolling past the ghost of Michigan Central Station, I knew it felt like home. Something called out to me then and something is calling out to me still. I feel as if I belong here.

But going back further, I think it is time to reexamine who I was growing up and who I wanted to be at every stage of the game. I have never been one to hide behind a persona. I am pretty much who I present myself to be, a flawed pseudo-punk/hippie chick/art geek, not too good at the mechanics of adulthood, and just wanting to exist in a beautiful world. I don't want to "be" a career, I feel no call to own expensive things, and I certainly don't want to have to fit in. I am a consumer but I don't want to be consumed by it, you know?

So, back to the roots. Back to who I thought I wanted to be at 5, at 15, at 25. Where do I measure up now? And what has fallen away that I feel I am missing? These are the things I need to rediscover in the coming year. I know I am not done growing. I will never be done growing. But what is going to make me feel as I'd grown strongest and best by the end of my life? Those are questions for a more awake mind and for one that has given up control and let the dream take over. And Blondie did say it best. "Dreaming....dreaming is free," in so many more ways than one.