Dream Bigger
Welcome to the dream blog
I woke up in Stephenville, Texas one recent morning and …
Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. The story actually starts further back in time than that – 32 years ago, in fact, when I was pals with a fellow named Joe. We worked together at a magazine in western Canada, two Southern boys far from home who’d found themselves in the custody of an old-school editor who awoke each morning eager to gore an ox (any would do) and who articulated frustration in memorable ways. I once saw him heave a phone through a window, for instance – and this was when phones still had cords.
Joe and I worked long hours, so long that even a conscienceless 19th century mill owner would have fretted about our health. During whatever time was left over, we all pursued adult beverages and women with equal fervor. Sleep was, at best, an occasional option. But we were young, healthy, exhilarated by life, and felt like Masters of the Universe (when we weren’t dodging hurled phones). Eventually, though, I drifted off to another job. So, too, did Joe a year later. We lost touch, and that was that – until a couple of months ago, when Joe tracked me down via email with a proposal.
It turned out that Joe had become a public relations executive in the intervening years. I’d evolved into a newspaper columnist and novelist. Joe was looking for a writer, and I had come to mind. He had a project he needed help with, but one so odd that he couldn’t boil it down to what Hollywood calls a “high concept” utterance. The subject line of his email said, “Couldn’t think of a subject line.”
Once I read Joe’s message, though, I realized the subject line was actually easy: “Fabulous gig awaits willing writer.”
One of Joe’s clients is a maker of high-end pillows and mattress toppers called Carpenter Co. Using the slogan “sleep better, dream bigger” as a starting point, Joe wanted me to set up shop in a small, typically American town and – using that place as a stand-in for all of us – determine whether we still manage to hold fast to our dreams in these troubled times. He even had a specific town in mind.
And that’s how I came to wake up in Stephenville, Texas one recent morning.
And now, here you are – the reader. Welcome to the blog. Dreams – the kind you have when you’re awake and thinking about your life and the future – are the main topic here. It is our belief that important things start with a dream. All of us, when we think about the future, express our hopes as dreams. We think about our dream vacation, dream home and dream job. When we were young we thought about our dream date, and when older about our dream mate. Our greatest social ambitions are often expressed as dreams; Martin Luther King Jr. had a particularly memorable dream, as you recall. And performers are big dreamers. The Allman Brothers had dreams, the Everly Brothers had dreams, Patsy Cline had sweet dreams and Sonic Youth imagined a daydream nation.
But as often as not, we’ll veer off into lots of other directions. There is much planned for this blog: travel, celebrities, humor, history, culture and a few surprises. Seems like there was something else. Oh, yeah – we’re also revolutionizing the underpinnings of journalism. (But more about that later.)
Coming up in future posts: Who’s the country’s biggest dreamer? And why Stephenville?
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