On Achieving Dreams and What Comes Next

You're reading this essay because I got to write a second book. My first book was what one would call a success although it feels egotistical to say it like that. I was a USA Today and New York Times Bestseller with Momma Cusses: A Field Guide to Responsive Parenting & Trying Not to Be the Reason Your Kid Needs Therapy. Like...as far as seven year old me is concerned, I fucking did it. I have achieved a life long dream and I technically did it in the first half of my life. Arguably barely as I turned forty like a week later and that is often pegged as middle age but still, barring disease or accident, my natural life probably hasn't quite hit the halfway mark and I'm a best selling author. 

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Wow. Just. Wow.

This is neat. Really, I'm honored and awed.

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Now what?

Like, okay. I did it. I hit the lists. I get that little asterisk next to my name. I've crossed it off my bucket list. Someone will write it on my tombstone. Probably. I won't know. I'll be dead. But dead and still a bestselling author. 

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I have to tell you, it was the tiniest bit of a let down, finding out. In my head, I had always hyped hitting these lists as some monumental moment marked with champagne and commemorative buttons and confetti. I was in my pajamas, pouring myself a glass of chocolate almond milk, when I got an email from my editor saying my book made the lists. USA Today and New York Times both were briefly aware that this little girl with horrible self-esteem and weird hair from a deeply broken family in Oklahoma had written a book and folks seemed to think it was pretty good. 

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I was excited. I cried a tiny bit. My husband was excited. He ordered me a custom coffee mug. Which is a thing for us. It was a touching move. Pro-level husbanding. My family and close friends were excited. My friend Emily cried more than my mom did for the record. But my friend Emily cries at dog commercials so grain of salt for scaling the reactions there. After all the news was shared, I finished my glass of chocolate almond milk and decided I wanted some popcorn. So I made popcorn. As a bestselling author. The next morning I woke my kids up and took them to school and made silly little videos on the internet. As a bestselling author. Nothing changed. And my imposter syndrome has somehow managed to turn this actual honor into a source of shame. "Oh. My. God," the bitch will scream, "No. One. Cares. You. Egomaniac."

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My own need for therapy and self-acceptance aside, what comes after you achieve a dream? Not what comes after you meet a goal? Then you just set a new goal and start working toward that one. But dreams are different. They are constructed of different stuff. They are built of reality and magic, fact and fiction blended, the attainable and the imaginary blitzed together by the person who dreams it. When you achieve a dream, what do you do after that? How does one dream a new dream? 

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I suppose I could strive to win a literary award - one of the fancy ones like the Pulitzer or Nobel or the Booker Prize. But those don't feel like dreams. Those are just goals now. Wishes perhaps. I'd be willing to call that wishes. Is a wish how a dream starts? I don't remember how I ended up with a dream of being a bestselling author. It's just always been a part of me for as long as I can remember. And sure, do I want this book, or at least the one that brought you to this page, to hit those lists again? Abso-fucking-lutely. But that's still a goal, a wish, a hope. Not a dream. My dream already came true. What do I do now?