Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes. (Mary Martin)

Sometimes dreaming isn't enough. Sometimes that dream grows and nags away at you until there comes a day when you simply cannot ignore it any longer. Too many signs appear to tell you that the dream you harbour can be more than a dream. Too many friends and family are lost before they ever have the opportunity to try to reach their own  dreams and you start to think that you really should do something about fulfilling a long held dream. And then comes that fateful day when your whole being shouts YOU HAVE TO DO THIS.

This is what happened to me when David and I got together. Suddenly, out of the blue whilst driving back from a weekend at his home in Wales he said that he was dreaming of living in Germany. Well somebody might have just as easily slapped me across the face because   my soul shuddered and I was awake. Burying my dreams to deal with everyday life did not mean that it was no longer there. Many times over the years that dream had surfaced during my quiet times but whenever I mentioned it to anybody they laughed and said "there you go again, off into Lala land"

And so there it was again. "Let's do it" I said "OK" he said and that was it we had decided. So why has it taken us a further 2 years to get there?  Well I suppose it is because we are both planners! I am a control freak and I want to know what I am letting myself in for.

This wasn't a pipe dream for either of us. After all we had both studied German, we had both been longing to live in the Mountains of the Austrian/German border area for so long. We knew that, together, we could make this dream come alive.

And so we set off on our Adventure which was to become an Austrian adventure sooner than we realised.

Be careful what you wish for lest it comes true

We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.

As a young girl I looked forward to springtime with great anticipation. I would look for the appearance of the dandelions and burdocks and the seedheads with a head full of wishes ready to blow on those seeds and send my wished to the sky. I would sit crosslegged in, what I believed to be, my field of dreams and ponder the list of wishes that I had to make sure that I would only choose those wishes that I really wanted to come true. After all I was taught by my Nana "be careful what you wish for lest it come true" and I was always an earnest child so I took my wish making very seriously.  In truth my "field of dreams" was a patch of grass behind a row of council houses in the middle of a chemical industrial town. Still I dreamed of far flung places, seeing the world, living in the mountains of Germany or Austria. I truly believed that this was a dream and wish that I did want to come true and so, every year, my first wish would be thought through as "I want to live in the mountains where the air is clean, the people are different and the sky is blue". Hey I lived in a chemical town with nothing more than a mound of grass at the back of my council estate what more could a girl dream of.

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This week I have found myself revisiting those dreams and wishes as I wander through the forest near my home in West Wales. It is filled with Dandelion Clocks or, as I prefer to call them, Jenny Joes.  I have no need to make that yearly wish this year because I am already heading towards my dream of living in Austria. Not quite there yet but so close.

I thought that a blog might help me to work through all of the plans for the future. I can share my preparations for the new life, mistakes I make, discoveries found, my ups and my downs (of which I am sure there will be a few)

Join me, make comments and share your thoughts about your own dreams and wishes. But most importantly enjoy the trip.

As Louise May Alcott said
We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.

- Louisa May Alcott