I am a Quitter Conference Veteran. I wrote about my other conference experiences here and here. I like to call myself a Quitter conference “junkie.” I just can’t get enough. They inspire, encourage, and challenge me.

I am working toward a dream of music and writing. I have no idea what the end goal is, but I’m working a little every day on these goals, hoping at some point that it will become clear. This third conference gave me some new “big picture” ideas about my dream. I have no idea how to get to those big picture goals, but it was nice to have some sort of end goal in my brain. I’m not ready to share these goals yet, because I think I need to let them marinate in my brain a bit before putting them out there. Hopefully with time I’ll be ready to share them.

My head was swimming once again with all the information I obtained at this conference. I’m still processing and sorting it all out. So, the best way I know to share what I got out of it is with bullet points.

• You need to know you’re not crazy. That is one of the beautiful things about Quitter, is being amongst a group of fellow dreamers. It’s nice to get some validation that it’s okay to dream. I’m not alone, and that’s a relief.
• Your dream will not be perfect. It will be messy. I am so learning this on my journey. I get so frustrated when the pieces of my dream don’t fit together all neat.
• Fear tries to hand you an apathy shield. Apathy numbs you from hurt and hope. This whole thing is pretty hard, and putting myself and my work out there is scary. I’m bad about apathy, pretending like I don’t care, but it will numb you from all feelings good and bad.
• It’s okay to experiment and not be perfect. When I write songs, I want them to be all inspiring and amazing. But I’m just getting started, and most of my songs are going to be three chords with a simple melody and will probably all sound the same. And that’s okay.
• Your day starts the night before. If I’m going to get up early and write, I need to get ready the night before. Plan out what I’m going to work on (if I don’t, I’m totally aimless in the morning) and get a good night’s sleep so I’m not cursing myself when the alarm goes off.
• Your dream is not for you. You’re a caretaker for it. One of the big things I got out of this conference is that I want my dream to be bigger than me. I don’t want to write songs just so I can make money (although a bit of income from that would be fabulous), I want to help people.

It’s Monday morning, and it’s hard to get back into the daily grind after such an inspiring weekend. But I still got myself up early, and I’m doing the work I know I need to do. It’s not easy, but I feel like the end result will be worth it.