Jen Frankel Blog Entry
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Jen Frankel counts the time since she was a dreamer
So much time has passed since I dared to dream.
Strange things. Wonderful things. Places that I wandered in dreams, people that I encountered in daydreams.
I think I’ve lived my entire life with the notion that no dream can ever become reality.
There must be a veritable ton of proof to the contrary. I dreamed a drama club at high school, and made it a reality. I dreamed “The Frogs” on a high school stage. Now, that made a bit of a splash when I was in grade eleven. I remember Mr. Bakker, the history teacher, laughing in an otherwise dead silent auditorium at stuff that hadn't been funny since Aristotle was alive...
The problem with my dreams is that even when they slip out of my head into the real world, they never take on the fullness of what my imagination conjured. I’m unable to do more than give birth; the rearing and education of my dreams has always been beyond me.
Beyond me why is the question. I refuse to believe that I am fundamentally incapable of following a project through to its completion. But I’ve always treated the initial admitting of the dream’s existence to be the most important part of my job, and falter once it reaches the light of day.
Jen Frankel dissects one of her more destructive beliefs
That’s a direct result of my nagging and perennial belief that no one can possibly want to accompany on a journey to the actualization of one of my dreams. Partly, I’ve always had the conviction that everyone has their own dreams, fighting for life like mine, and that because I don’t want to take the time or effort to throw myself into someone else’s project and abandon my own, that everyone else feels the same way.
This is despite the evidence I have of fully throwing myself behind projects brought to me by friends, my own actions showing the falseness of my beliefs. The truth is that I do not trust others to find me interesting – or rather, I think that the people I know and can set my work before will somehow remain completely unmoved, while my true audience or potential allies are those amorphous others that exist only in the far-removed world of which I never really feel a part.
I don’t think I can alter my surroundings, except within my own head. That conviction has sapped my desire to even try, something that extends to everything from being afraid to sing when anyone can hear me to not feeling even qualified to throw away old clothes.
I think, early on, I was so powerful in my imagination, an elemental force capable of altering the lives of my creations with a thought, that I felt my power in the real world would have to be inversely proportionate. How could I have influence out in reality when I used all my power to write?
Jen decides to undermine the belief, not herself
It’s such a strange belief when I put it down on paper; it looks like the rantings of a woman absolutely determined to undermine her own ability to succeed. And that’s definitely the net result of the way I have looked at myself in relationship to the world around me. I feel invisible, hence I am powerless. And as a consolation, I have absolute power over the world in my mind.
Well, I’m here to say that I don’t want to have only the one realm, where I am Queen, and the other where I seem to have all the solidity of a ghost. And I state it here so I can remember it: I will have an effect on the world.
I have never been afraid of making a noise, only of not being heard.
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