I woke up drenched in sweat. A nightmare. But not the kind of nightmare that comes from my past. No, in this one I was standing in front of a crowd holding a microphone.
But it wasn’t a “fear of public speaking” nightmare.
I had just entered the scene to teach a class, but then it turned into an auditorium, and I had the crowd going. And then I said, “I probably shouldn’t say this because they say you should never admit it but I have to be honest. I’m not really prepared to teach today. I am just going to wing it.”
And the people started getting up to leave and I yelled, “You’re only getting half a credit if you leave this classroom!”
More and more people got up. The room seemed endless, and they all kept leaving.
I finally dropped my head, took a deep breath, and then said, “You can all go. This is my fault. I was not prepared. I can’t punish you because I didn’t do my own work.”
That’s where I woke up.
Doesn’t seem like much, right?
Except I know this dream speaks volumes. It is a reminder that I can do all the attention-grabbing work I want to get in a door or onto a stage or garner an acceptance, but if I don’t do the work, I’m just setting myself up for failure again.
I’m reminded of “back in the day” when I ran popular online newsletters (zines), how I scrambled on the day of publication each time. How in school, I waited until the last minute to finish and turn in an assignment. And how even with my TEDx event, how it wasn’t until falling on my face (IMO) in rehearsal that I finally spent the week before the big day cramming my speech into my head.
What even is this resistance?
It’s the same thing over and over that I have in the past recognized and nailed down as living lottery dreams. Doing the bare minimum and hoping for maximum success aka buying a lottery ticket and hoping to become a millionaire.
It just doesn’t work.
I first happened upon my take on this minimum work vs maximum hope – lottery dreams – when I was writing my first memoir and reflecting on my mom operating in this way. While we lived in a trashy single-wide trailer that had zero plumbing, water, or electricity, Mom would draw elaborate house plans but spend cash on lottery tickets. LOTTO and scratchers. If she won any small amount of money, she reinvested it in more lottery chances.
The appeal is understandable – more now than it ever was before – but I remember even as a young girl being so upset about the waste of money, and also caught up in the possibility of it all.
And we always lost.
I lost even more because I somehow adapted this behavior into my life, minus the actual playing of the lottery. I have still approached my career goals from a lottery dreams perspective.
A writing teacher once shared, “You think you do your best work at the last minute, but how can you be sure? Have you ever tried starting earlier?” I remember the words but never really applied the lesson. Part of this, I’m learning more recently, is executive dysfunction, and I’m doing brain work to help the bits that are not necessarily in my control.
The rest? That’s up to me. That’s up to me to learn how to find ways that work better, to be more prepared, to make time for practice, to push myself, to no longer say “I can’t” or “I’ve never” and instead lean into ways “I can” and “Starting now…”
I might not yet know all the ways of HOW but I do know that just getting a YES! does not immediately equal success. I have to put legs on each idea, each project, each acceptance to get where I want to go. I have to reprogram my old “lottery dreams” way of thinking.
-December 27, 2021
