Dreaming Out Loud
The "Be Seen Challenge", a Tennessee dream I've been keeping to myself, and everything inspiring me to live it today.
There has been something quietly shifting in me this summer.
Not externally. Internally.
I’ve been working through the Be Seen Challenge from To Be Magnetic, and one of the exercises asks you to consider where you’re still hiding. Not because you’re afraid of failure—but because you’re afraid of being fully seen.
That question has stayed with me.
As I’ve sat with it, I’ve realized there are parts of myself I’ve slowly edited over the years. Not intentionally. Just... quietly over the years. You learn what people respond to. You become more polished. More strategic. More careful with your words and how you express yourself.
And somewhere along the way, I realized I’d stopped talking about one of the things that’s always been most true about me.
I’m a dreamer. A really big one in fact. Some may say too big, but I say, why not?
I want to share a story that has come up during the challenge that really paints this picture well…
When I was little, I was absolutely convinced I was going to own a pony. There was only one problem—we lived in the suburbs.
Most kids probably would’ve accepted the “NO” from their parents after many, I mean many, nights of simply “NO.”
Not me.
I had an entire business plan worked out for how I was going to keep a pony in my mom’s vegetable garden. I had figured out where it would sleep, how I would feed it, where it would graze (down the street in the neighbors open lot), and I was certain if I explained it well enough, everyone else would realize it made perfect sense.
Thankfully for my mom (and her garden), the pony never happened.
But the dreaming never stopped.
As adults, I think we become much more careful about sharing our dreams.
Somewhere along the way they start feeling too big. Too unrealistic. Too much.
So instead of saying them out loud, we quietly tuck them away. I’ve done that more than I realized.
I’ve shared plenty about renovating homes, building Clouz Houz as a Design Studio, and moving across the country to start over… again. But I haven’t shared many of the dreams sitting quietly beyond that.
The fun part starts here! If you'd like to step inside this dream with me, I'm sharing the full vision, the inspiration behind it, and all the little details I've been imagining along the way.
