Snow

How do we feel special or unique or at least secretly living?

Until today, I’ve always wondered what it was about certain things that made me feel exotic or different or unique for special. I have a fascination with snow.

Today is January 23, 2019 and yesterday it snowed in The Netherlands. I grew up California. California is mostly desert. Sure, head high into the mountains and there’s snow but that’s exactly my point. You have to head high into the mountains, you have to go far away, it’s probably a special occasion, most certainly Christmas.

But today is a Wednesday.

In a regular January. I live here now. I live where it snows.

Something that used to be unique and special an uncommon and didn’t happen very often is now something that I can attain as I walk out my front door.

Bradley, just today

The snow gives me a clarity of thought. Maybe it’s because the sounds are dampened by the white fluffy carpet that covers the earth or maybe it’s because of the simplicity of the single color that abounds. But it’s probably because I still see it a special or exotic.

This is how I used to see writing or being an author.

It was something that other people did and I admired from afar.

Probably lots of people said this

Today, I am an author. I write books. What used to be a far-fetched dream only attainable to those types of people who do those types of things has become who I am.

I admit but I have a somewhat Norman Rockwell version of the life I want to be living. With my writing, I envision a woman curled up in a big cozy chair next to a fireplace with a steaming hot cup of tea next to her, she has reading glasses and her hair is up in a bun. It’s quiet, there’s no one around to disturb her, she’s completely absorbed in the story, and if I want to absolutely combine two worlds into dreams into one new reality, it’s probably snowing outside.

So the clear question I have for myself is how do we transform the exotic and the special and the secret and the unique into something attainable, into what we do and who we are?

With Spark Campfire, I want to bring that dream, that thing that other people do, into the hands in the hearts of those who thus far have only draft of it.

I can hear the skeptics and the naysayers and the doubters who whisper, “Well, if you love snow so much, move to a place where it snows.”
Or they turn the other way and whisper to the person on the other side of them and say, “If you want to be a writer, just be a writer.”

I refer to the famous NPR car talk radio program where Click and Clack, the Tappert Brothers, explain how to replace a car engine into simple but not easy steps.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Step one remove old engine.
2. Step two insert new engine.

Relating that to realizing my own dreams:

1. Move to a place where it snows.
2. Become an author.

How do we make the fanciful and the gorgeous and the sparkling crystals of snow into our everyday existence?

In other words, how do we become special? How do we become that type of person who does that type of thing? The answer, of course, is painfully simple.

Do that thing.

I’m sure, if I took the time and the effort and learned how to replace a car engine, I could do it.

But I don’t want to replace the car engine. I want to walk in the snow in the woods and take photos of the fluffy white stuff I’ve thought was magic falling from the sky since I was a kid. I’m now writing books, living the dream I dreamed of since I was in my early 20s.

If we call something an experiment, there is no chance of failure, the two possible outcomes our success for learning.

Go live in the place that brings you childlike joy.

Go do the thing that you previously thought was only done by people who did things like that.

Do the thing you dreamt of doing.