Kill your television birth your dreams

Two years ago I did something that changed my life forever - that changed me forever. I took a gamble on a dream.

When you come to think about it, all of the biggest and best dreams involve a gamble of some kind because we just don’t know how they’re going to turn out.

The process of turning a dream into reality always involves some tentative first steps into the deep unknown, often with a panicked soundtrack of fearful thoughts such as…

• WTF are you doing?!

• You’re about to make a total fool of yourself!

• This is all going to go horribly wrong and you’re going to end up dead in a ditch / homeless and living in a bush!!

My dream was to travel the world solo, so my panicked soundtrack included all of the above!

I’d dreamed of travelling the world ever since I was a teen. So, after devoting 20+ years to being a mum and building my career as a writer, I was ready for adventure.

I’d been reading a lot about a new tribe of people called ‘digital nomads’ - people lucky enough to be able to work from anywhere as long as they had a laptop and internet access and were taking full advantage of that freedom - and it suddenly dawned on me that I could be one of those people. If I was brave enough.

So I decided to take a little gamble. I’d go away for one month, to a place I’d never been to before and where I knew no-one, to see if I had what it took.

I chose a town called Eureka Springs, in the Ozarks in Arkansas.

One of my American cousins had told me it was a quirky, colourful town, full of artists, musicians, writers and hippies, which sounded exactly like my kind of place and therefore made it a little less of a gamble.

Plus, during the pandemic I’d moved to a town in the UK that was the exact opposite of Eureka Springs and I hated it, so that helped too!

Nonetheless, I remember feeling really nervous when I arrived at the cabin I’d booked to stay in and first ventured into town. But what happened next was nothing short of magical.

arriving at my cabin

Every time I went out and everywhere I went I seemed to meet someone fascinating and make a new friend, and everything I did seemed to be sprinkled with some kind of serendipitous fairy dust.

Early on in my trip I bought a card to send to my dad.

I found it in one of the many art galleries in Eureka Springs and I bought it for my dad because it said, ‘KILL YOUR TELEVISION’ on the front.

My dad is not a fan of television. So much so that we didn’t have a TV all throughout my childhood. My parents believed that TV was bad for a kid’s imagination.

At the time I HATED my evil-doer parents for what I felt was tantamount to emotional abuse, mainly because I hated missing out on all the school playground TV gossip. And back in those prehistoric, pre-internet, pre-mobile phone days, TV was pretty much our sole source of gossip.

Now though, I have to grudgingly admit that it’s probably thanks to my parents’ TV ban that I ended up becoming a novelist, as I had to spend so much time in the world of my imagination.

(I actually wrote an entire post about this when I first bought the card, which you can read here)

Anyway, two years ago, I sent my dad the KILL YOUR TELEVISION card and a couple of weeks ago, when I was helping my dad have a clear-out, I found this…

the piece of card with me as I write this to you from a cafe in Brighton

He’d cut it from the card and put it next to his television! (Which he only ever watches the occasional DVD on).

I was about to throw it out when I saw my writing on the back so I stuffed it in my bag to read later.

And when I read the snippet from my letter it made me well up as it took me right back to that time and how happy I’d been, just one week into my first solo trip. The trip that changed everything. Here’s what I’d written…

I came back from Eureka Springs forever changed. Not only did I have what it took to rock up somewhere I’d never been to before and where I knew no-one but I bloody loved it! I immediately booked more solo trips in other countries and when the lease on my apartment in the UK ran out later that year I didn’t renew it and I became a full-time nomad, and I’ve been ‘home-free’ and the happiest I've ever been ever since.

I had booked to stay in Eureka Springs for all of January this year, but then my dad got sick and so of course, I cancelled.

It’s been a really heavy and sad time for our family, and as I write this to you, my dad is back in hospital again.

But seeing what I’d written on that piece of card was like receiving a message through time from my February 2023 self, when I was so full of gratitude and excitement and adventure.

A message to remind me to keep believing in the magic in these more difficult days.

I’m keeping that piece of card in my purse so I see it every day and never forget what can happen when you take a gamble on a dream - not to mention when you kill your television!

And now I’d like to turn the message of this week’s letter over to you…

• How could you take a gamble on a dream of yours in the next few days / weeks?

• If you were going to write a note for you to find in two years, what would you say?

• Or, if you want to get really trippy and mind-bendy, what would your two year’s from now self write to your present day self?

• What dream would they urge you to take a gamble on so that they might reap the benefit?

Until next week, happy dreaming!

Siobhan

PS: In a magical example of the serendipitous fairy dust that seemed to have been sprinkled over my life during my first trip to Eureka Springs I ended up becoming friends with Teresa Pellicio, the artist who created the KILL YOUR TELEVISION card.

PPS: If you want to read more about my Eureka Springs adventures you can do so here and here