It's all about visualisation apparently

Mum talked about how, following the big piece of paper entry, there's some new book that tells you to visualise your dreams.
This isn't a new theory to me, but is one I totally agree with.

Tempting though it is to visualise myself as the third spoke in Brad and Angelina's wheel of love, I've decided to park that one. In it's normal spot labeled 'late at night'.

Post Harry, in the park yesterday I was visualising a more cherished dream. One that I've been faithfully monogamous to for many years. The dream of being a columnist, preferably for the Guardian. Or the Observer. I'd settle for Vanity Fair or the Times failing that. Let's be honest, the Bognor Regis Evening Advertiser, would probably be the best place to start, but that's not the dream so I'm not visualising it.

I decided I needed to do a few things to make this dream come true.
First up, I needed to articulate it. A close relation to the visualise your dream theory is the, be open about your dreams, ask for help if needs be, sister-theory.

Second Up I needed to read both the Guardian and the Observer and get the editorial leads for all the little magazine containing columnists bits.

Manageable chunks. Both ticked.

Third up, well, according to Amy and Si i need to go off and be a journalist, or work my way up from a local paper, or be famous already. Preferably in sports. Presumably, this doesn't include street hockey, in which I have some name, or curling, boules or synchronized swimming, the others in which I may be in with a chance. Post diet, with a bag of hard training.

I'm not having this third up. Partly cos I will be half dead by the time I get there, and kneecapped by my credit card company for taking a trainee / athlete / Youth Training Scheme salary. In not having it I'm not skiving. It's not that I'm afraid of starting at the bottom or working the 60 hour weeks an apprentice does. It's more that I think I've done the hard work. The years of battling the inner voice that yells 'you can't write, you're crap you are'. Now I've silenced that lovely little creature, I believe I can write. I believe I could be a columnist.
If I start at the bottom again, somewhere close but not the dream, I could end up as far away as ever in five years time, being able to taste but not touch, the dream. I'm not sure I won't take to drink if that's the case. So need to just get to the dream, bypass the close to stuff.

I mean if Peaches Geldolf can do it at 11, surely the gypsy could do it at 33?
Ok so I've not got her contacts.
but maybe one of you lot have?
Or maybe there's another way?
I was thinking we could start a campaign. The Gypsy for Guardian columnist. Get post it notes on the editors' PC's. Get helium balloons flying past the board room at the exact moment the board are meeting. Get me, witty articles in hand, standing in the lobby of the Guardian's Farringdon offices, in best gypsy skirt, with best gypsy cleavage, and best gypsy charm, at exactly the moment the Chief pops his coffee cup on the reception bar? Get an online petition in which you email your mates who email their mates and we collectively stuff the editors mail box until the computer systems jams; and he agrees to give me a try out? What do you reckon?

I'm not sure where to start. It's such a big dream that even thinking about starting scares the bejesus out of me. I can't keep procastinating either. I'll go mad, every time I read the Guardian all I'm thinking is 'I wanna write for them and am as far away as ever.' I've been good at making ambitions come true. Except this one.

I am of course working on some sample columns. I'm asking for help, as directed by my 'how to be an artist' book. I'm asking for ideas, for ways you'd make it happen were it to be your dream. Things you've read about that made it happen for others, bar the sixteen years at the Colchester Times route. I'm prepared to mount a long and sustained campaign, I'm prepared to be patient and committed and keep at them until they crack. If only I knew how to ensure I don't blow it right off. To ensure that any 'wacky' ideas get me a 'go getter, just what we need' label rather than 'another blog diarist who thinks she can write and just blew her best shot' response.

I'm visulising it. Me, chatting to Julie Birchill, asking her if she'd be my mentor and blogging bout how she said yes. Me, with the cool pic my sister took in the top left hand corner of the page, writing about reality TV and speed dating and how a trip to Uganda changed my life.

Could you all do the same? I'm sure it would help, mass visualisation. Please also throw ideas around more freely than a beach ball, in comments, I know you're all creative ideas driven folk.

Oh, and by the way, I have a job. It's a good solid housing policy one. I hopefully start next week. I don't see this as incompatible with the columnist dream.