In a dream world, I think many of us would wake, take care of our morning routine (workout, shower, kids and spouse on their merry little way) and spend the day chasing our dreams as a writer.

My dream world would allow me to spend the first few hours of the day jumping around to people’s blogs, laughing and supporting the amazing people in the writing community, having a lovely non-rushed lunch, get a fresh Diet Coke, and write until the kids came home.

Beautiful dream, right?

But our dreams and our reality don’t always align.  My current job has me at work by 7:30 am, about 30 minutes for lunch, ends at about 3:30 pm, kids, dinner, practice (both me and my kids all on piano, one child with the violin too), help with homework, reading, bathing and try to spend a little time with my spouse and fit in writing before I collapse.

This has sent me into a bit of the grass is greener syndrome, which I wrote about here.  In fact, I have job envy.  I share this blog with university professors, which is where I kind of wanted to end up, but life threw in enough bumps that it didn’t happen.  Yet.

I want to have the life of a writer, doing book tours, hosting online conferences and author interviews and bloghops and immerse myself completely in the writing community.  Again, life and whatnot and that hasn’t happened.  Yet.

And I have two really great ideas for books I want to write after I get this one finished.  I want to see my name on the front of a novel and have it show up on goodreads and amazon, but I have to finish the one I’m on and that hasn’t happened.  Yet.

My very wise father, when I was sharing a few of these thoughts with him, reminded me that I’m 33.  My youngest child is 6.  Which means in 12 years, when all my kids have graduated high school, I will be 45.  Imagine the possibilities that still exist.  I just can’t have them all.  Yet.

I’ve never really been known as a patient person, but writing, kids, marriage… you get get idea has taught me that I can’t have everything right now.  But I can have it.  See, while I make lack LOTS of patience in many situations, that is balanced out with what I have – a pretty determined work ethic.  I think most writers do.  And we see the dreams, goals, ambitions and can get frustrated that it hasn’t happened.  Yet.

But who’s to say that they can’t happen?

What are the goals and dreams that you are striving for?  What do you do to keep these in front of you?  What techniques have you found to keep moving in the direction of your dreams?