Making It Happen

by Cheryl Wright

I had two definite dreams as a teenager: to be a writer and to be an interior designer. My parents never encouraged me to dream or to pursue those things that interested me. They believed that I should do a secretarial course and get a good job. I dutifully did what they wanted, contentedly working that area, for twenty years.

At the age of thirty-eight and married with two children, ages 10 and 12, I began to get restless. I found that my job brought me no satisfaction. I was so unhappy that I felt exhausted at the end of the day. I yearned for a career change and I hungered to do something more creative. My daily mantra was "life begins at forty and that will be true for me." I began thinking seriously about what I could do instead of secretarial and administrative work.

I saw a newspaper advertisement for a flower arranging course and I enrolled. I enjoyed it but it was not "my thing." Several months later I came across a host of decorating shows on cable television and I became addicted. I watched several of them daily, lapping up every word and every scene. My dream was reborn and I became obsessed with pursuing a course of study in interior decorating and design. I wanted to do this so much that I ate, slept and breathed interior design. I told everybody who would listen what I wanted to do. Not all of them encouraged or supported me. Some tried to dissuade me altogether. Their words only made me more determined to achieve my goal. I looked beyond them and their words and visualized myself living my dream. Nothing could deter me.

In December 1995 at the age of thirty-nine, I began my studies. I was going to begin a new life at forty as an interior designer. I completed the two-year course in six months and received my diploma three weeks before my 40th birthday. I was excited. More accurately, I was ecstatic.

Ten months later, I got my first real job in the design field as a decorating consultant with an interior finishes showroom, just two weeks after they opened. I guess you can say that I cut my "decorating teeth" there. Two years later I was asked to teach an interior decorating class. Not being one to run from a challenge, I accepted, then wondered what I had gotten myself into. As it turned out, I conducted classes for three years and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

In 1997, I met a sales representative for a local monthly magazine that targeted working women, and I casually asked her why they did not feature an interior decorating article. She was interested, and two months later, my first article, entitled "Home Decorating with Cheryl Wright," was published in the Trinidad Style Magazine. Today, five years later, I still submit articles to the magazine.

That experience reawakened my dream to be a writer, but I knew that I needed training to polish what little bit of talent I possessed. After obsessing about it for a while, I finally signed up for a freelance writing course. Several months ago, I began working on the manuscript for a book on interior design. Articles on pursuing your dreams, setting goals and organizing your life have been playing around in my head. I have also been thinking about publishing a decorating newsletter.

I learned to think of my dreams in terms of setting goals and outlining the steps required to attain them. I am a planner by nature so the process was not unfamiliar to me. I visualized my dream, conceptualized it in detail, worked at it, and finally achieved it. You can too.

The Author

Cheryl Wright is an interior design consultant and freelance writer. While her writing specialty is decorating and design issues, she is now expanding her horizons to include motivation and self-care especially for women.