In this solo vlog, Mary Schiller documents day 16 of her 30‑day "Following My Dreams" challenge (July 23, 2024). She reports finishing the first 7,000‑8,000 words of the rewrite of her novel and reviewing Act 2 concepts from the book Save the Cat Writes a Novel, noting that her draft already aligns closely with the structure. She continues French listening practice in preparation for an A2 exam in October. Mary reflects on the power of modern media—YouTube playlists, self‑published books, audio products—to create a lasting legacy and spread hopeful messages about it never being too late to pursue dreams, regardless of age. She announces that she is drafting a new offer for her community, emphasizing that older creators (40+) need to step into the media space despite the dominance of younger voices. She invites viewers to comment, share their own daily actions, and join her mission of using one’s voice to make a difference.
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Bonjour! Hello! It is day 16 of 30 Days of Following My Dreams. Jour 16. It is the 23rd of July, 2024. Le 23 juillet 2024. And je continue de suivre mes rêves. I continue to follow my dreams. I fully intended to make this video outside today, but the weather is not cooperating. There is a pretty big storm coming through here right now, and of course it was not forecast, as is typical. So I am back in my cozy little loft space with this video right now. I have already done quite a bit today. I finished the first section of my novel rewrite, the first 7,000 to 8,000 words. I think it's about 8,000 words. Hoping it is sort of following the Save the Cat outline, I now need to look at the second part and see if I can understand what Act 2 is according to this book. So I'm going to read through that section today. Also making time to continue practicing my French because that is necessary for the A2 exam that I'm going to sign up for probably today. That takes place in October. But I have something else that I want to share with you right now that is really on my heart and in my mind and relates to something I'm going to be offering to people very soon. Something that I have never done before exactly in this way. So I have been reflecting a lot on how easy it is for us to reach people with what is important to us, what message we want to share with the world. And for me, that message has a lot to do with hope. It has a lot to do with following your dreams. It has a lot to do with it not being too late, no matter where you are in your life, what age, what stage. It's not too late. And I was doing some Googling of myself actually and just seeing what kinds of results popped up. And what was so cool was that I found several playlists of me that people have created here on YouTube, which was like, what? People have created playlists of my videos? And it just showed me the power of all of the different media that are available to us, not just YouTube, but all kinds of places that we can use as a channel for what we want to share with the world. And I thought to myself, you know, the videos that are here on YouTube, the books that I've written and self-published on Amazon, and the audios that I have created, the things that I have sold to people or shared for free— all of those things will be a legacy of mine. They will last far into the future after I'm no longer here. And not only that, but it's just so rewarding to know that even if we don't have a platform of, you know, millions of followers, we're still reaching the people that we're meant to reach. And so part of the reason that I decided to document this whole following my dreams, suivre mes rêves, is because I wanted to make sure and reach people who might have been thinking it's too late for me, or, you know, what can I possibly do on a small daily basis that could make any real impact on my life or on anyone else's life? And I want to be living proof that all of that is possible. So I'm going to leave you with that. Right now, and I'm going to go do a few things, and then I'm going to come back and see what Mary has accomplished today, what Mary has realized today, and I invite you to join me. I'm back. It is just about 4 PM here, and I am going to call it a day.
Wow, I did a lot today. I went through the whole section of the Save the Cat Writes a Novel book about Act 2, and I realized that what I've already written in my original draft is pretty close to what needs to happen in that second act, except for a couple of things that I definitely need to change. So that was actually somewhat of a relief. So starting tomorrow, I'm going to start rewriting that section and see what happens. I'm very excited about that, looking forward to that. I also did some more French listening practice. These exercises are so silly, I have a hard time not laughing. The other thing that I did was I started to write a description of this new offer that I'm going to make to the wonderful people in my community, and it relates to what I was talking about this morning. And I'm going to try not to get too emotional right here because this is a very emotional thing for me, but we have so much available to us now in terms of sharing a message with the world. We need to start taking advantage of that. We don't need to be young. We don't need to be a celebrity. We don't need to look like a fashion model. We don't need anything like that in order to start to use these channels to get a message out there that is important to us, because I can guarantee you, if the message is important to you, it's important to someone else. And the proof is I am sharing what's important to me, and you are here with me participating. And so as I have been looking at this idea of using our voice and making a difference through that, I've realized a few things. And one is that all of these airwaves, if you will, are dominated by people who either have some sort of status or frankly a lot of younger people.
And I'm not against younger people.
I was younger once, and I have a daughter who is younger, but those of us who are over a certain age and have a lot more life experience, we need to start showing up. We need to start being a new voice, if you will. If you do a search of YouTube, you will be hard-pressed to find many people who are, let's say, over age 40 who are publishing regularly and inviting people to join them in a community, and I'm not just talking about YouTube, it's everywhere. So this is an important mission for me that I have realized throughout this 30 days of following my dreams. I didn't realize how big a thing this was until I started this process, so expect to hear more about that. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments and what you did today, so please share them with me. I will see you tomorrow.
