Whoa Dream Big

He got this look on his face, one I know well: brows furrowed, chin cocked to the side. And I knew what my husband was going to say before he said it, because that’s what happens when you’ve been with someone for one third of your life. He set his bowl down and took two long strides into the living room, eyeing me.

“Whoa Dream Big?”

It’s his way of announcing that he’s going to talk about dreams and wild hopes – all things that seemed ridiculous as he stood there, holes in his socks and semi-permanent purple half-moons under this eyes.

I was perched on the couch, coffee cup clutched in my talons. The kids were around – jumping off of some high, sheer drop, or coloring on a wall. I don’t know. They’re a little collective whirlwind of chaos, now, as though they realized they can raze more square miles if they work together. Aryn leads, Liam shrieks behind her, and then River Grace teeters after them, eager to drool on the ashes of whatever they leave behind. So – picture that general din of chaos in the background, the low rumble of Pompeii – circa 79AD – mixed with a weekly Midwest tornado drill.  

“Now?” I ask. My hair is an unruly bun, my glasses covered in smudges.

“Two minutes,” he says, and I know that there was no point in fighting it.  

Whoa Dream Big is a sacred invocation. A safe harbor.

“You could sell one of your pilots this year. You could get staffed this year. That could happen soon.”

I am quiet, because 2019 transformed me from a wide-eyed, hopeful fawn of a writer galloping through meadows and riding the winds of newly-birthed literary dreams into the old crone who levels her shotgun at that poor creature and pulls the trigger without thinking twice. I’m super fun to be around is what I’m saying.

I don’t know when Whoa Dream Big started, exactly. I know it was inspired by a line from Juno. And maybe it started as a joke – I don’t remember.

Whoa Dream Big is the no-judgement zone. It’s the place where we can say our most ridiculous dreams without feeling proud or entitled or presumptuous. Worse, without feeling delusional. We would talk about Whoa Dream Big things on cross-country road trips.

We’d whisper about it over sleeping babies. I’d look up at the huge “Author Signing Tonight!” signs at big book stores and smirk. Whoa Dream Big?

We watched The Director and the Jedi documentary, and as Rian Johnson talked about writing for Star Wars Ross nudged my shoulder. Whoa Dream Big.

But those felt far. Over the past year, Whoa Dream Big started to feel silly to me. Naïve. A thousand writers, at any given moment, are thinking the same thing. So somewhere, I stopped saying it, and I stopped smiling when he said it. I’d curl my lip and sneer, or roll my eyes and walk away.

There is something special about the flavor of the failures you sample on the other side of “success”. I didn’t think everything would be easy once I published a book. I wasn’t stupid. I’ve watched Magic Beyond Words – the Lifetime adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s life – enough to feel like I was prepared for the third-act dip, thank you very much. I’m not an idiot.

But shit, I didn’t know it could feel like this.

I didn’t know I’d feel delusional, still, even with my name on the spine of a book at Barnes & Noble. I didn’t know that publishing could still throw several curveballs, shelving things I thought were ready and ordering new books I didn’t think I’d write for years (right. More news on that one, soon). I didn’t know I could still cry over rejections – that they could feel as raw and fresh as my first “pass” on a full.

We’re too old for Whoa Dream Big. I have too many rejections in my inbox to justify Whoa Dream Big. Just let Whoa Dream Big wander out into the forest and die like the wounded animal it is.

But Ross didn’t think about it like that. I wanted to sit at the bottom of the empty well that was last year, bloody and tired, and smash whatever remained of my Whoa Dream Big optimism on the stone. But he always found me, and took it from my hands. He tucked it into his pocket and told me he’d keep it until I could take it back.

He wasn’t any less tired. He wasn’t any less sad. But I can say one thing with certainty – Whoa Dream Big would have died in 2019 if Ross hadn’t saved it.

So smash cut back to the living room. Me eyeing daggers at him, because it’s 2020 and he’s bringing it back. He knows what he’s doing. This isn’t a simple sentence. It’s him telling me it’s time to get up. Time to try, again.

A standoff.

The kids knock over a lamp. They tear the stairs apart with their teeth. They smash the hall mirror and make crowns with the glass shards.

“Yes. Theoretically, that could happen,” I mumble, finally. “But it is a long shot.”

I glare at him, daring him to argue.

“Every success you’ve had has been a long shot,” he says. “So. I’ll take those odds.”

It hits me just where he was hoping it would. I can’t argue.

And at some point between the kids dismantling the Christmas tree to build their bonfire behind the couch and them wrapping Cricket in toilet paper, I realize he’s right. 2019 kicked my ass, but what am I going to do?

Maybe that’s the worst part of this whole thing. Or the best part. Both. It’s that I believe I was wired for this. Made for this. And no matter how many times I get clotheslined, I’m going to come back for more.

So I look at my husband, the man who has never let Whoa Dream Big die, even when I’ve literally said something along the lines of if you say Whoa Dream Big right now I will actually shove a fork through your fucking hand, or something equally charming.

“Whoa Dream Big: sell the adult fantasy,” I say. To his credit, he tries not to look too triumphant. “Sell the pilot and/or get staffed.” I lift my chin. “Yeah. That’s possible. That’s possible this year.”

He waggles his eyebrows and walks backwards into the kitchen. Whoa Dream Big is alive and well. Aryn finishes fastening a detonation device to the downstairs toilet as Liam and River build a small retaining wall of pillows and tell us all to stand back.

And I sip my lukewarm coffee and take a deep breath, thinking about all the moves I’m making in the next couple weeks. The bathroom erupts and the house collapses into the hillside. Aryn and Liam shriek with joy, and River wears a terrified Kovacs around her neck like a scarf. My home is in ruins, but I pick rubble and drywall out of my coffee and bite my lip like a true YA protagonist as I contemplate what I just agreed to. What I just let back in: hope.

Because, listen. There is something dangerous about keeping your dreams in the dark warmth of you and never letting them see the sunlight. And I’d seen that same sentiment hand-lettered on canvas selling for $49.99 at Target, but I didn’t really get it until I got it.

I’m going to be embarrassed, again. I’m going to try and put things out there that flop. I’m going to say stupid shit and wish I hadn’t. I’m going to art really, really hard and watch in real time as people shrug it off.

And then I’ll look up to the God that made me and the husband He gave me and I’ll do it again.

2020, we’re coming for you.

Whoa Dream Big.