Dreams, deferred

Hello again.

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire — Desolation (1836)

Dear friend,

Often, when I look in the mirror, all I see are unrealized dreams. To an extent, they are how I define my life. For every completed project, I see the dozens I let wither; for every success, I see the manifold failures that preceded it. Maybe this is just how life works, but it’s difficult for me to accept this as ordinary — or even, perhaps, okay. Deep down, I feel incurably delusional, a quixotic dreamer who spends more time basking in grand visions than turning them into reality.

Once, when a former lover asked me where I see myself in ten years, I rattled off a motley list of aspirations: reporting in international conflict zones, starting a school, working in a French bakery, writing in a cabin in the woods (à la Thoreau, not the Unabomber), running a company/publication/institute of sorts. My heart still feels tugged toward all of the above, but I don’t feel like I am advancing toward any in particular. I can’t make sense of them either; no matter how diligently I try to pick them apart, I can’t quite grasp the underlying thread. I struggle to unite the scattered selves I’ve crafted, the disparate visions of the future that occupy my head.

This is partially why I retreated from the internet over the last year. It felt frivolous to indulge in a world of make-believe and cultivate an online persona when my real one felt so primitive. What I desire, above all yearnings for connection and attention, is to feel whole — and being online, in any and all forms, felt antithetical to that.

But I can’t ignore the consequences of this period of seclusion. I’ve lost contact with many dear friends. I'm constantly plagued by the questions of where I would be, what opportunities I would have, if I had remained engaged at the same level that had brought so much serendipity to my life before. But most disappointing of all is that I have allowed writing to become one of the many dreams deferred. Sure, I wrote: in my journal, in my notes app, in countless untitled Google Docs I proliferated without pruning. But there was nothing to show for it, nothing I shared with others. If a writer writes in private and no one is around to read it, does she make a sound?

This is all to say: I’ve missed you. You, as in: my Internet friends. You, as in: writing. You, as in: this tiny part of myself that has lain fallow.

I hope you’ll welcome me back. It feels good to be here. Almost, in a strange, unexpectedly delightful way, like returning home.

With love,

Ash

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Harlem
By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?