Teamwork: Making The Dream Work
Always and forever
Well, Dames Nation, once again, you knock our socks right off. We edited everything for length & clarity, but even so, we have such an abundance of riches to share with you that we’re going to get right down to it – after we thank you once more. As we said in last week’s issue, we are so grateful for and touched by your thoughtfulness and generosity with these very personal reflections. Nobody is crying around here, of course, perish the thought, but if anyone does shed an appreciative tear, we would be the last to judge.
Social & family circle responses
The most notable and consistent finding of our small survey is how supportive respondents’ social and family circles are. You’re surrounded by people who want you to follow your dreams!
This is amazing and wonderful, and we also want to leave room for the very real possibility that our data is skewed. We ourselves might be put off from submitting a response to this survey if we weren’t surrounded by people affirming the living daylights out of us on a daily basis. If you’re in this category, know that you’re in good, if quiet, company, and that we would love to hear from you so that we can affirm the living daylights out of you, privately or publicly!
Dreams Now!
The two biggest themes that emerged in your responses to our question about what factors made following your dream(s) possible were not surprising, but they are illuminating:
Having a financial cushion, whether saved up with a partner or independently
Having way fewer fucks to give, courtesy of age and life experience
Unsurprisingly, Dames Nation is very clear-eyed about what they want out of life, and about their continuing search if they haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s remarkable that so many of us are feeling so energized and focused when so much of the cultural messaging around middle age leads us to expect stagnation and boredom. Just having more clarity about what it is that we're doing that we did not have in our twenties is…pretty great?!
Brooke, 42, she/her: I quit my salaried job and launched a consulting business at 40 years old, and finally decided to prioritize what was going to be healthiest and most rewarding for me and my family. My journey looked like me pursuing what I thought would be the "right," most successful path (getting a PhD, working for "better" agencies, etc.), and personal happiness and health decreasing along with my ostensible success. Finally it just culminated in a straw breaking this camel's back, and me pretty suddenly quitting after months of increasing stress
Katrina, 41, she/her: I thought I had found my dream - working in the arts as a full time, paid professional - a notoriously difficult field to get into. However, I am now questioning whether or not I want to stay here just because I worked so hard to make it happen. Now I am exploring my options: anything to figure out what is feeding me as a person and how to translate that into a career.
Anja, 43, she/her, corporate lawyer: I am still at the point of looking for "my dream". After so many years doing things that easily came along and seemed appropriate I just don't know what would/could make me truly happy.
Stacy, 51, she/her: I’ve been writing poetry since I was 9, but it’s usually only for my journals or loved ones. I want to learn the craft in a more legitimate way. I’m hoping this can be a parallel thing to my paying gig.
Jessie, 39 and a law student preparing to sit her state’s bar exam: I’ll have to start in a new industry from the ground up, but I have a wealth of life experience behind me. I have no doubts as to my strength, my capabilities, and my calling to work hard toward positive change in this world. The best part is, I know I’m not going to take any shit from anyone this time around. ;)
Sam, 43, they/she: 20 years into a career as a school librarian, I have, like Dame Karen said, gotten very good at something I don't personally care about: helping teachers use technology in the classroom. Meanwhile, the world has gotten needier, and I feel like my contribution to those needs is tucked in the edges instead of being central to my life. I am really good at raising baby activists, and that seems like something the world and the youths in question need right now. My dream now is the total opposite: make up a career and see if I can convince people to pay me for it!
Sarah, 56, she/her: I am not a planner and I have relied on my intuition for most decisions all of my life. I will jump first and worry later. The only planning I adhere to is financial. I am single, never married, and I have my own money. After years of struggle, I became debt free over the pandemic at the age of 54. My hard-fought financial security offers me incredible freedom.
All of my life all I have wanted was to live on a hill with my dogs and horses. Over twenty years ago my parents bought a horse farm on a hill. For the last two years I have had a strong desire to move closer to my parents and the farm. Fast forward to March 2022 when I accepted a job I’d applied to on a whim on a Monday. That Wednesday, I turned in my notice at my current job, drove to the new town to look at a home, and put in an offer. I’ll close on a house in two weeks and move in days before my first day at my new job.
Erin, 45, she/her: I started doing stand up comedy at 40. I was living in Europe and went to an English language open mic on a whim; after watching, I decided I was at least as funny as those I'd seen. Now, I run a monthly comedy show on a military base and tour the EU and the UK.
Carol, 64: Living abroad - it had always been a fantasy, but I hadn't even traveled outside of North America! So the first thing was to start reading, and traveling - see where I might like to land.
Sophie, 46, she/her: After 20 years in librarianship, I switched to full-time freelance writing in January. I’d gotten laid off in 2019 and needed more time and emotional energy than I anticipated to grieve that loss. It’s only been a few months, but even during weeks when I’m writing more pitches than pieces, it feels great. I love being in charge of my time, and having all of that time to sharpen and write, for pay, more of the ideas my weird ok, fine, creative, brain is always churning out.
Katy, 45, she/her: I decided to go back to school to train as a mental health counselor, specifically to work with kids. Once I recognized that this was something I wanted to do, the excitement I felt really carried me through the application process and got me in the door for my first class, and once I was there I knew in my bones it was right.
Chelsea, 44, she/her: After decades of listening to music, writing about music, making music videos for my friends’ bands, and hosting radio shows, I wrote my first song on my 40th birthday. I have since written 150 more and recorded an EP of original songs. Fewer fucks to give. Knowing no one was watching me.
Karen, 46, she/her: This is all incredibly new for me. I was very serious about the fact that I would never quit my day job. I actually used that as my bio a few times when I started writing in public. “Karen Corday will never quit her day job.” It just didn't seem possible. In terms of why it became possible for me, well, I'm not married and I don’t have kids. I’d been living below my means for a very long time. I live in a small apartment, I drive an old car, and I had a very good job for several years and I just banked a lot of money after paying off all of my loans and credit card debt. It turned out that I was making a cushion for myself to be able to try and do something else.
Sarah Howard Parker, 46, she/her: In early 2017, I was talking to a friend at a party about acting. And he put me in touch with a friend who runs a casting agency. She asked me to come in and audition the same week. So I went; it was a sausage commercial; I didn't book it. I did get called back, which made me feel good.
I did end up booking something else: a big pharmaceutical conference, and with other actors performing HR scenarios for the participants. I was getting paid to act, and that was cool. So then shortly after that, we moved to England for Chris’s job and I said to myself “All right, you're on a career sabbatical. What's the thing you want to do? And I think I was able to give myself permission to do that because I took a break from my life.
When I told the woman at the casting agency that I was moving to England, she put me in touch with a casting director she knew there who said, “There's really only one agent in this town for Americans and you need to get him to talk to you; here's his contact info.” He took me on and so then I started going out regularly for TV shows and movies, like big auditions. Eventually, I got a nice voiceover job where I played like a bunch of kids, which was really funny. And then I got some other weird corporate things, and then coronavirus happened and we had to come back to the United States. I felt like I was just building a network there and loving and, it felt great. I really loved my life there, just . I remember thinking “I can't believe this is my life. It's my dream life that I'm living.” So it was really, really hard to leave that when the coronavirus hit.
Ask Dames Nation: Your Advice On How To Get There
Your advice is so good, so warm-hearted, encouraging, and bracing. It may be our favorite part of this whole project!
Julie Falatko, 50, she/her: I worry that the requirement to have a dream puts pressure on people. But if you're living life with this uneasy feeling that Kid You would look at your life and say, "wait, what happened to ___________?" and you have to sheepishly admit that you neglected your dream because other people gave you the notion that your dreams were foolish, then you should figure out a way to get back to that dream in some capacity.
Elizabeth B, 52, she/her: I think it's so important to build a community, both for feedback and accountability. You need people around you who believe in you and won't let you quit even when you want to!
Marjorie Mitchell, ageless, she/her: Do it now. What will you be doing in 2 years if you don't?
Katherine, 45, she/her: Trust yourself. If you feel unhappy in your work, you probably are. It was so difficult for me to admit that my "dream job" was more of a nightmare. I think I knew this very early on and wish I'd listened to myself more.
Katie D., 44, she/her: If you've been through a rough period and a dream has stuck with you through that rough period, you need to pursue that dream with your whole heart.
Alex (she/her): As appealing as the idea of a singular, all-consuming passion can be, it is not a requirement. Also, it is totally fine to stop if a plan isn't working out for you; even if you've spent considerable resources pursuing it. Perhaps the joy is in the pursuit.
Sophie, 46, she/her: when I was teaching and doing continuing education work, I was always saying “ok, what are our goals & objectives? Let’s work backwards from those.” Over time, I distilled my very long list of wants to three big non-negotiables for my next act: self-determination, collaborative work, and learning new things. So far, so good!
Anne, 47, she/her: It's only really been through conversations with the women who run the art co-op, and with other artists, that it dawned on me that not only could I pursue this as a real thing, I was already doing it. Making the decision to try, and to name that out loud, was a real step for me (a solidly Gen X person who grew up with the wisdom that it was not the done thing to admit to trying). I feel like I'm just at the beginning of this part of my life and I'm so excited for it!
Katie D, 44, she/her: I'm coming out of a period of burnout that started when I was 39 and hit rock bottom, HARD, when I was 42. I've spent a year and a half assiduously working through a combination of therapy, specialized coaching, and life coaching to work through the burnout. Coming out of burnout, I knew I still craved having a career as a writer where I can reach MY audience. I've been published in some way for over 15 years, but I've never seen my minimum definition of success and I'm determined to hit that minimum in the next 5 years.
Karen, 46, she/her: The thing that really slapped me in the face was, of all things, reading The Artist’s Way. Julia Cameron writes about a common thing that she sees in people who “want to write”: they choose a job that’s sort of adjacent to writing rather than pursuing writing and that had been my entire working life. There were things I liked about publishing and things I liked about information management. But as time went on, I got further and further away from those things because that's how I was making money. It seemed like the most absurd arrogance to walk away from that. I thought “I'm just bad at working, I'm lazy, I have a bad attitude.” But I had really put myself on a completely wrong path, starting in my early 20s.
Sarah, 46, she/her: [After returning to the US, Sarah tried to juggle both her responsibilities at the literary festival and working long hours on the set of Salem’s Lot, a film she booked a role in. It was totally untenable.] It made me think that the festival deserves more than that, and also like maybe I deserve more than that? Maybe if this is the moment for me to be an actor, I should really be able to do that and focus on it completely.
I was scared of that conversation. My husband and I have had this setup where we both work and we have two reliable incomes. We have had a set schedule and acting is really unreliable and the money is all over the place. I might not work again this year! I've had a couple of months of work but that could be it.
So that all felt really scary but it also felt wildly liberating. I felt a weight lifted off me when I decided to leave the festival. And it was so sad to me that I was like wow, I think I was just gonna maybe live the rest of my life carrying this weight around and doing this job because I thought I had to.
Kate, 47, she/her: I don't think the mental load of parenting ever really goes to 0, but my kid now lives on the other side of the country and can handle most things on her own. As for therapy, during the pandemic I spent time talking to my therapist about what I wanted from life and what was holding me back from it. I'm still working through some of those issues, but knowing what I want and taking it seriously are huge.
Teach_la_la, 68, she/her: Fake it til you make it!
Carol, 64: Dream big, but with your feet planted firmly on the ground, and don't expect it to be handed to you on a platter of any precious metal.
Julie, she/her, 50: This last one has taken me a while to figure out: be intentional about your internet usage. I spent a lot of time talking on social media about my process and what I was working on, and I ended up looking at the reactions as validation. But I really ultimately want the validation of writing a good book. I was distracting myself. When I decided to spend more time in the uncomfortable space of not knowing, that awkward silence between the sentences I was writing (rather than tweeting about my tough writing day) my writing started to get a lot better.
Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:
Red Sox Hall of Famer and living legend Bill “Spaceman” Lee, 75, coming out of the stands at a Savannah Bananas game, beer in hand, to do some impressive high kicks and strike out a player.
Guided By Voices frontman Bob Pollard recently executing his own impressive high kicks on-stage. Yeah, they still tour — and sound like they’re playing really well, per a this review of a show this very week in Portland — with beers aplenty right behind him. Never change, Uncle Bob!
Harry Styles’s new single “As It Was”, a 2-minute, 46-second dance pop confection that is…also some lyrical vignettes about break-ups? Or having a really hard time adjusting from one phase of your relationship to another? As a lifelong devotee of songs in the Peppy Melody & Beat, Saaaaaad Lyrics category, Dame Sophie is enchanted. The video offers us A+ outerwear, sequined jumpsuits, and Harry dancing, featuring choreo that says “yeah, I’ve watched Singin’ in the Rain 500 times, and I know I’m no Gene Kelly, but by god, I’m going to try!”
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This is a wonderful and inspiring edition! Thanks so much!