In this vlog entry recorded on July 10, 2024, the creator (Speaker A) reflects on the third day of a 30‑day challenge to follow their dreams. The day began with severe insomnia, possibly caused by a locked French account, and a lingering emotional reaction from a visit to Le Bon Marché’s children’s floor, which triggered a mix of grief, anger, sadness, and unexpected joy tied to past experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. Speaker A decides to channel these intense feelings into the novel they are rewriting, using the protagonist’s loss and magical moments as narrative fuel. Mary Schiller chimes in from a park, sharing her own struggles with self‑doubt, fear, and frustration, but emphasizes that such feelings are random and not indicative of failure. She reports progress on her novel’s main character, a brief French language review, and experimentation with a tech tool for one‑to‑one work as a business owner. Both speakers stress perseverance, invite audience interaction, and conclude with a promise to continue the journey despite challenges.
Chapters
Am I ready for day 3? I'm about to find out. It is July 10, 2024, day 3 of 30 Days of Following My Dreams, and today has started out rather strangely. Last night I could not fall asleep at all. I had major insomnia, so if I look tired, that's why. And I don't know exactly what happened and why I couldn't fall asleep. It could be because I was having trouble logging into my official French account. It was completely locking me out. So this morning I sent them an email and said, hey, I'm locked out of my account. They'll sort it out. It could also be because of something that happened yesterday that I did not share in the day 2 video because I needed some time to kind of process it or something. I'm not even sure. Yesterday, day 2, you may remember that I went to get some inspiration by going to one of my favorite places here, which is Le Bon Marché department store. I realized I had never been to the top floor, which is where all of the kids' stuff is— toys and clothes and books. And there's even a place where you can get some child care while you're shopping. And when I got to that floor and started walking around, oh my goodness, I was completely overwhelmed by emotion. It was all in there, basically. It was a mixture of grief, anger, sadness, some joy in there too, and it was not expected at all that I would feel something like that, and I'm still feeling it today, and I know why that happened, at least in some sense, And I will link to this book in the description if you're interested. This isn't a plug, but I wrote about this in my memoir. My experience of being pregnant and being a new mom was not what it was supposed to be, was not what it should have been because of the person I was married to at the time. There was so much magic still in that experience despite all of the horrible things that were happening, that that is what I remember most is those magical moments and the feeling that I had of being a new mom. But I still have this sense of grief.
I can't help it.
And this morning I realized that, you know, there's a way that I can use that emotion in my novel that I'm trying to rewrite during this process, or at least start to. The main character has had a tremendous loss before the book begins, so I thought, well, you know what, I am just going to tap into all those feelings of grief and guilt even, and loss and despair, as well as magic, and infuse all of it into my character. That's going to be easy for me to do. So while it was a difficult experience in the moment and continues to kind of linger today, I think in the end it will serve the novel well. So I'm gonna get on with my day now and see what I can do. If you're joining me, please do comment and tell me what you're up to.
It is just about 5 PM here on day 3. I'm in my neighborhood park and I've got my headphones on and my microphone next to me because there's quite a few people here enjoying the warm weather. I would be lying if I said that today was an easy day. It absolutely was not. I had some serious moments of self-doubt and Concern and fear, and I mean, all of it was present today, it seemed like. And the thing that I've learned over the years is that feelings like that don't actually mean anything. They are random. They come upon us because they just do. It's not because what we're doing is wrong or what we're doing isn't what we're meant to do or anything like that. So luckily I can continue on despite having all of that going on in the background. I did make some progress with my main character in my novel. I think I started to write out some characteristics of her that were a little bit more in-depth than I had before. I spent some time on some frankly rather boring stuff related to French, but just some review of some basics. That was fine. I also spent a little bit of time looking at some other things that I could offer as a business owner. I played around with a couple of tech tools, one of which I think could be extraordinarily helpful for me in terms of working with people one-to-one. So that was interesting. So all in all, I made progress. It just wasn't what I would call a fun experience as much as I would like it to be. The thing that makes it fun though is sharing it with you and hearing about you on your own 30-day journey following your dreams. So please do comment on that and let me know how things are going for you. As for me, I am not going to give up. Even when I feel frustrated, even when I'm scared, even when I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just going to keep going. And that's all there is to it. So come back tomorrow and see what happens.
