Don’t Let the Big Dream Stop You
Early in our careers, my husband and I both successfully bartered with our employers for five consecutive weeks off. We pointed our ancient 250,000+-mile Nissan Pathfinder west toward Yellowstone, planning to hop from national park to national park until we reached the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
The Pathfinder was geriatric and very tired. Going up mountains with the pedal to the metal (as they say), fully loaded 18-wheelers would speedily pass us by. Returning from the trip, we found our friends had a bet that we would be coming home in a new truck, but she made it!
We slept in a tent. When the poles broke, we slept in our backpacking tent. The air mattress sprang a leak, but we managed to find a Walmart and a new mattress a few days later. Our backpacking tent delaminated, and a nighttime storm pushed a stream of mud into our tent and around our sleeping bags. That night, with lots of duct tape, we jerry-rigged the broken poles of the larger tent and got it standing again. After five weeks on the road, we barely spent any money, but even with a few equipment malfunctions, we had the most fantastic time.
I dream about us hitting the road again for an extended period. I’m a little older, and my joints are a little more creaky, so I find myself eyeing those cute new campervans. But those cute new campervans are a pretty penny!
I’m stuck between The Dream and my budget. I don’t really want to allocate that much of our budget to a campervan. I also LOVE those cute, little, adorable, functional campervans, and I know one of those would make our next trip so much fun. I’m feeling stuck between two opposites, so I’ve just been doing nothing.
Doesn’t this happen all the time?
Think of all the personal or work projects you’ve been dreaming of doing, but for whatever reason haven’t gotten around to it, so you’re stuck. Like this example: We want to put together an extensive new-member onboarding plan, but it’s such a big project that we haven’t had time to get it started, and in the meantime, we don’t do any onboarding at all.
Is there a big project in your future? And do you find yourself saying, “We’ll do that when we’ve done The Project?
Well, it is time to get unstuck! When confronted with the Big Dream, let’s ask the question: What are all the other ways to solve this problem? If your best friend stalled out on their Big Dream project, what ideas would you come up with for them? Back to my big campervan dream, I could:
Rent an adorably cute campervan
Buy an empty van and convert it
Find an adorably cute but aged campervan to purchase
Stay at some hotels
Check out those rooftop tents
And I’m just getting started, maybe there are 20 more creative ideas!
Buying a gleaming, brand-new campervan doesn’t have to stop us from the real dream, which is traveling, just like whatever big project you want to do in the future doesn’t have to stop you from heading toward your goal now.
What Big Dream project has you stuck?
