Getting the Want

Did you ever want something really, really badly and not know how to get it? Of course you did. But what do you do when that happens?

Right now I'm wanting the pandemic to end and to be nearer my son, sister, niece, cousins and other family; but making that happen is super hard because I'm thousands of miles away with a job that's really right for me.

It's times like these and wants like these that sends me into a whirlpool of magical thinking. When I lived in New York and took for subway to work, I used to choose something I wanted and concentrate really hard on it.

Sometimes the things I wanted would really happen. One of those things was a production of a play at one of my favorite theater companies - Circle Repertory Company.

There was no way in the world I would ever, ever have dreamed that this particular dream would come true--but it did. I don't know why, exactly - it happened in a very happenstance way. Perhaps working hard at what I loved to do and joining the Playwrights' Center (again, thousands of miles away from New York) brought me to that moment.

The funny, as in odd, not fun funny thing, is that when I wished for a play production I was in my twenties in New York, trying hard to be a professional in the theater world. Yet the production didn't happen until I was in my thirties, years later, and had moved away.

I guess what I'm thinking right now is that we have the ability to make our dreams happen and shouldn't give up if it doesn't happen five minutes after we wish for it. We also have to try and have the courage to take the steps we need to take.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And while I'm writing to you here, what I'm really trying to do is talk to myself. Because if I don't ask myself what I want and figure out how to get it -- I'll regret it.

Anyway. I had no intention of rhyming that. But I'll try and save it so I remember it next time I'm writing a song.

What do you really, really, really want right now?

What can you do to get it?

Questions I can't necessarily answer (at least not the second one).

But I know enough to keep asking.

I hope you do, too.


Make a wish photo: Garrett