In this solo vlog, Mary Schiller reflects on the question of whether it’s ever too late to pursue one’s dreams. She argues that it’s never too late, sharing a compelling story of a young, paralyzed man who left Florida, moved to Mexico, and started a tech‑support business despite disability skeptics. Mary contrasts the notion of achievement—an external, human‑made construct—with self‑activation, the internal drive to live authentically each day, and explains that documenting her 30‑day “follow‑my‑dreams” series is itself an act of activation. She then details a painful creative struggle: reworking about 800 words of her novel using the Save the Cat Writes a Novel outline, which triggers intense self‑doubt about her abilities as a fiction writer compared to her confidence in nonfiction. This emotional turmoil spills into her broader work life. The vlog concludes with a personal note: it’s her anniversary, she and her husband will go out to dinner, and she plans to reset for tomorrow’s episode.
Chapters
It's day 5 and it's raining. It is July 12th, 2024, day 5 of me spending 30 days following my dreams. And I woke up this morning contemplating this idea of whether it's ever too late, and my answer is always no. It's never too late. Now, if I had wanted to be an Olympic gymnast or something Okay, maybe it's too late for that, but it was too late for that when I was like 12 because I'm 5'10" and when I was 12 I was already 5'8" and I was horrible at gymnastics. Plus, that was never a dream of mine, so, you know, I don't feel like anything's been thwarted there, but I just don't see how our potential can be limited in that way. And I was remembering a video I watched several years ago of a young man who had been living in Florida on disability payments. He was young, I mean, he was maybe 20 or 21, and he had full-time carers, and he wasn't making any money. And he said, you know, I just didn't want to live that way anymore, and I decided I was gonna go move to Mexico live on my own, make my own money. And people thought he was crazy. Well, he didn't share his disability with us until later, but he said, you know, I managed to buy a car, I got it set up for myself, I drove down to Mexico, I set up a home there that I could live in adequately, and I started a business. I believe it had something to do with tech support or something like that. And I don't know where he is now, but at the time he had been living there for at least a couple of years and he was thriving. And he revealed at the end of this video that he was actually paralyzed. So he had some kind of vehicle rigged up that he could drive, and he had his home set up so he could get around. But he literally said, everyone told me I was crazy. They're like, you are so disabled, there's no way you're going to be able to live on your own. And he was just like, I don't care, I'm doing it. And I just love that because it's even more inspiring if you look at it in terms of activation instead of achievement. This is something I've been talking to people about recently, that it's not the achievement that matters because achievement is a human-made construct that has no meaning whatsoever. It's about self-activation. It's about living in a way every day that feels like you, that feels real, that feels exciting. And that's one of the reasons that I am doing this whole series, not just for myself but documenting it on YouTube, because that feels very activating to me. It feels risky. It feels, you know, challenging, frankly, to do a video every day and document what I'm doing on these projects with my novel and French and all these other things. So if you are looking at "it's not too late" in terms of achievement, you're looking in the wrong direction. Look at it in terms of activating your Self—Self with a capital S—and ask yourself how you can do that more today. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments on that as well, but let's see how Mary made or did not make progress today. Wow, okay, it may not look like it because I'm wearing the same clothes, but it is several hours later. It's now almost 5 PM here, and I am definitely calling it a day. It's also my anniversary, so my husband and I are going out to dinner shortly at a restaurant nearby. I did not get out of the apartment all day because, as I'm looking out at the sky, the weather has been pretty awful. Looks like we might get a break so that we don't get rained on on the way to the restaurant. But oh my gosh, this day just kicked my, you know what. I mean, like, I want to cry right now. I really want to cry because I reworked maybe 800 words of my novel according to the Save the Cat Writes a Novel outline. And so I was going through the first section of it and just feeling like, oh my gosh, what have I done? Like, should I just chuck this whole thing and start a whole new book? Should I just give up on novel writing? I mean, I really struggled a lot, and I do think that this outline and this system, the Save the Cat system, is good. I'm determined to stick with it. It's just that today just really kind of did me in, honestly. I started really questioning my abilities in a way that I haven't done before, and maybe this is something that everyone goes through. I'm sure all writers do this, all novelists do this. I'm used to writing nonfiction, and I don't have this same level of doubt because I'm very secure in that. I know how to do that. Fiction writing, I don't know how to do. Yes, I did draft a novel, but I, I don't feel at all like a novelist or a fiction writer or anything like that. So yeah, I spent quite a bit of time in tears today just wondering what the heck I'm even trying to do. And then that doubt started to spill over into everything else in my work life, my business life. Just all of it started to look very murky and scary and just all of that. So I am going to get ready to go out for a nice dinner, put on something pretty so that I feel good about myself, and I will be back tomorrow with another episode. Thanks so much for being here.
