My mom played The Beach Boys on car rides a lot.  Like, a whole lot.  I was a 10-year-old girl growing up in Texas and knew just as many Beach Boys tunes as most folks 30 years older than me.  That’s when it started – my fascination with Southern California, Los Angeles, especially.  These dudes sang to me over and over about their surfer ways, young love in the sun and all the fun they had in their cool cars.

This was the time in my life when my dreams for my future really began to blossom.  Performing was my thing.  It’s all I thought about during that time.  I had been a dancer since the tiny age of 3, and at 10 years old I decided to break my big news to my dad over a burger lunch at the local joint.  “I want to be on TV.”  I don’t know what my dad was thinking, and I don’t remember his exact response.  But it was something like, ‘Okay. We’ll see how to do that.” Good answer, dad.  He didn’t respond with negativity or dismissal, thank God.  That would have crushed me.  And even if he was thinking negative thoughts, his choice to be calm and hopeful on the outside was one of the best things he could do for me.

I’m 36 now and still want to be on TV.  Maybe it’s because I never got to try it and I’m forever curious.  Or maybe it’s because I still don’t know how to do much outside of the performing arena.  And maybe it doesn’t really matter why.  But the point is that I’ve realized grown-ups have just as many dreams as kids do, maybe even more.  On my mind now are not only my dreams for myself, but my children’s dreams and my husband’s dreams.  That’s a lot of dreamin’.  But it keeps us alive, right?

Nowadays I try to think of new paths to these cool destinations I dream of.  It’s pretty neat, actually.  I’ve learned that my grown-up ways of thinking mixed in with dreams from my childhood sometimes make a great recipe.  I can figure out a variety of versions of my goals, old and new, and can take control myself.  That’s one of the many reasons I like adulthood – control!  Granted, we all know we don’t have total control, but it feels good to take the reigns any chance we get, doesn’t it?

Just like all of my other childhood fascinations (except the marine biology thing – not into that anymore), mine for Cali still exists.  It probably always will.  And every time I’m there, I soak it into every single pore.  And the performing thing is still a part of my life, which is super cool.  Maybe my exact path isn’t what I imagined it would be when I was 10, but the fact that I’m following some version of that path is what matters.  Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

What’s your dream?