Defining a Dream
Dreams are often thought of as distant, unreachable fantasies, the kind that happen when our eyes are closed and we’re tucked beneath the sheets. But the truth is, we’re always dreaming. Every flicker of thought about the future—whether it’s ten minutes away or ten years down the road—is a dream. We may label it a plan, a goal, or a vision, but until it takes shape in the physical world, it exists only in that fragile, hopeful place: our imagination.
For me, one of the simplest dreams arrives each morning. Before the day fully begins, I think about coffee. Not just the taste, though that rich flavor explosion is its own small, beautiful miracle, but the whole ritual of it—the quiet scooping of grounds, waiting for the kettle to boil, talking to the cat, the warmth of a mug between my hands, and the view from the deck of my small boat as the sun and weather defines what sort of day it will be. But until I rise and actually make it, that coffee is no more than a dream, a longing. But the moment I pour it and take that first sip, it transforms into reality.
That’s the cycle of life: we are forever moving between dreams and realities, stepping across that line with step of the day. Even while making coffee, I catch myself dreaming ahead—about the weather, the small chores waiting on the boat, maybe a bit of writing. This dreaming process, it’s constant. Without dreaming we are stagnant, unable to push forward. Dreams are, in many ways, the raw material of living.
And yet, I know what it feels like to lose them. To actually live without any sense of dreaming about the future.
The Years Without Dreams
After Hurricane Sally in 2019, my life was split in two. A fall left me in the hospital with a collapsed lung, a shoulder blade shattered into three pieces, three ribs broken in multiple places and a head injury that no one could see at the time but it has reshaped everything. My body carried the bruises and scars, but the deeper wound was inside my skull. I woke up in a strange new existence, one where my mind was quiet—not the quiet of peace, but the empty quiet of absence.
Heavy medication, pain, and trauma left me stripped of something fundamental: the ability to imagine forward. Short-term memory loss haunted me, anything I witnessed was immediately forgotten; words, faces, impressions, they were gone within moments. Depression pressed down like wet rag over my mind, it was unrelenting and suffocating. PTSD and social anxiety tightened around me until I could barely function.
I spent months—years, really—staring at walls. Not thinking, not planning, not hoping. Just existing. People speak of “living in the moment” as if it’s enlightenment. But this wasn’t that. This was intellectual and emotional nothingness. A moment that repeated itself endlessly with no thread tying it to a future. It was like walking slowly on a treadmill: moving, breathing, but going nowhere.
During that time, even the small dream of coffee vanished. I would wake, sit, stare. The act of wanting had evaporated. My wife, Casey, kept the world moving around me, but I was no more a participant than a picture frame hanging on the wall.
Sparks of Return
Oddly enough, the thing that began to pull me back was YouTube. At first, I watched passively, just letting the images wash over me. Videos of small boat sailing, camping, fishing, the quiet art of photography. Chris Bamman, Rokkit, Roger Barnes—adventure based content creators who brought to me slices of a life I once knew well. Though I couldn’t put myself in their shoes; I couldn’t actually imagine being there. However, something in the background of my mind stirred faintly as their worlds filled my screen.
Then there were voices—Peter McKinnon teaching the craft of storytelling through images, John Gierach’s stories floating from audiobooks about fly fishing and living outdoors, weaving tales of rivers and trout and the small pleasures that make life worthwhile. At first, all this content did was fire my mirror neurons, giving me borrowed feelings of movement, freedom, and curiosity. But as time dragged on, small sparks appeared.
I found myself wondering—what if?
What if there was still a future for me?
What if I could taste that coffee again with something more than numbness?
Those thoughts weren’t dreams yet, not in the full sense. They were just faint glimmers, the possibility that a future might exist. But glimmers are enough. They are kindling for the fire.
Waking Again
Now it’s 2025. Looking back, it almost feels as if that blank, hollow period never happened. I know it did, of course, but it seems like another lifetime, a world I passed through but didn’t belong to. I still carry memory glitches, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether they’re improving or simply shifting shape. But the crucial difference is this: I can dream again. More importantly I can believe in these dreams.
I wake up on my Wharram catamaran, Curious, and immediately think about coffee. That little morning ritual dream has returned, and with it comes more: ideas about writing, about what direction to take my life, about income streams I haven’t yet built but can at least imagine. The dreams are modest, sometimes fleeting, but they are mine, and they are alive.
For now, my certainty doesn’t extend much farther than the simple rhythm of living: coffee, the rocking of the boat, watching the sky change its moods, writing down my thoughts. But I’ve learned that even small dreams are victories. They prove I’m moving forward, however slowly.
The Lesson of Dreaming
If there’s one truth I’ve carried throughout of all this, it’s that dreaming is not optional. It isn’t some luxury for the optimistic or the privileged—it is essential. Without dreams, we don’t move. We don’t grow. We stagnate, running in place, alive but not truly living.
Dreams are what carry us from despair to hope, from stillness to action. They start small: the smell of coffee, the sound of a river or pounding surf, the idea that tomorrow might be worth something. From there, they grow. And with time, if we nurture them, they can rebuild a life.
I’m still learning how to turn my dreams into reality again—how to create an income, how to carve out a future that’s more than merely survival. But for now, I take comfort in this: each morning, I dream of coffee, and from there, the world opens up.
Because dreaming, I’ve come to understand, is not just about wanting something that isn’t here yet. It’s about believing there’s still a path ahead—and having the courage to walk it.
Journey Island Style 