Wait. Is This Real Life?

I used to think creative dreams disappeared dramatically.

In my mind, there was always some defining moment. A woman standing at the kitchen sink realizing she would never write the book. A man quietly packing away his camera equipment in the basement after life got in the way. Thirty years later, a granddaughter or great-nephew stumbles across the old camera, the unfinished manuscript, the photographs, and realizes they inherited the same artistic hunger their relative never fully got to feed.

You know. Some cinematic ending where people consciously gave up on the things they once loved.

But the older I get, the more I realize dreams rarely leave us like that.

Most of the time, they fade slowly into practical decisions disguised as exhaustion and responsibility. Things that initially feel temporary until one year quietly becomes five. Then ten. Then one day you wake up and realize you’ve spent more time managing life than actually living the version of it you once imagined for yourself.

Damn. Sounds depressing, right?

I’m on the cusp of turning 45 next month, and I genuinely do not understand how time moved that fast. Don’t get me wrong — my life has held some beautiful experiences along with its fair share of devastation. But somewhere in the middle of all those moments, time stopped feeling infinite. Maybe it was naïveté. Maybe it was a pinch of arrogance. But for a long time, I really believed time would wait for me to have the right moment.

I think this happens to a lot of people, but especially to women. We become experts at carrying things. Families. Expectations. Stability. Other people’s emotions. Entire households sometimes. We learn how to survive almost too well. Somewhere along the way, creativity starts to feel indulgent rather than necessary. The dream gets pushed further and further down the list beneath work deadlines, grocery runs, school pickups, bills, caregiving, and all the other invisible labor adulthood quietly demands from us.

Life doesn’t kill the dream. It just gets loud enough to drown it out.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because this has quietly become one of the busiest creative seasons of my life.

Back in April, I released Part Two of my documentary, Caught in the Middle: Caretaking, Culture, and the Cost of Holding It All Together. Creating that project stretched me in ways I didn’t fully expect. Documentary filmmaking has a way of stripping away performance. People can sense when something is polished but emotionally empty. What they respond to instead is honesty. Not curated vulnerability designed for engagement, but the kind of honesty that lets people feel seen without needing to explain themselves first.

Working on the documentary also forced me to confront something uncomfortable about my own creative life. For years, I think I was waiting for permission to fully take myself seriously.

Not permission from my family. Not even permission from the industry. Permission from me.

Permission to stop treating creativity like something I squeezed into leftover time after everything else was complete. Permission to believe my stories deserved actual space in the world instead of constantly being postponed until life became less demanding.

The problem, of course, is that life rarely becomes less demanding.

At the same time I was releasing the documentary, I also entered the developmental editing phase for my novella, What We Carry, which is scheduled for a late Fall 2026 release. Developmental editing is a humbling process because it forces you to confront the difference between what you intended to say and what actually made it onto the page.

Fiction may be invented, but writers know pieces of themselves always slip through anyway. Our fears do. Our grief does. The conversations we replay in our heads at two in the morning definitely do.

Then there’s Chosen, my award-winning short screenplay that I’m now preparing to direct into a short film this October.

Even writing that sentence still feels surreal.

For a long time, I think I believed recognition would automatically create momentum. You win a few awards, receive encouraging feedback, place in festivals, and eventually somebody arrives to open the next door for you.

But independent filmmaking has a way of forcing clarity onto people.

At some point, you realize nobody is coming to build the life for you. You have to participate in your own dream.

So now I’m in pre-production, learning in real time what it means to move from “creative person with ideas” to someone actively building something. Some days feel exciting. Other days feel expensive. Most days feel both.

Coverart for upcoming Short Film - Chosen - Michelle Farley

I recently started documenting the process online through a series called Making Chosen, which follows the behind-the-scenes reality of creating a film from beginning to end. I originally imagined the series would feel polished and cinematic. Instead, one episode involved my nine-year-old and me attempting nearly 60 takes with a set of keys before eventually losing them in the grass for ten minutes.

At some point during the chaos, my son unintentionally became the prop master.

Oddly enough, that moment taught me more about storytelling than the finished reel probably ever will. Somewhere between take 22 and take 59, I realized how often we overcomplicate creativity. We convince ourselves we need the perfect equipment, perfect timing, perfect strategy, or perfect confidence before we begin.

In reality, most meaningful creative work is built inside imperfection — inside trying, inside figuring things out publicly while hoping the vision eventually catches up to what’s in your head.

I also think more creatives should be honest about something else: wanting sustainability does not make the art less meaningful.

Lately, I’ve noticed how uncomfortable people become whenever artists talk openly about money, as if creativity should exist completely separate from financial reality. But cameras cost money. Editors cost money. Production costs money. Time costs money. Constantly creating from depletion is not noble. It’s exhausting.

I want these projects to connect with people emotionally, absolutely. But I also want a creative life that is sustainable. I want to build work that matters while also being compensated fairly for the labor behind it.

Those desires are not in conflict with each other. If anything, adulthood simply forces you to become more honest about both.

Maybe that’s really what this season of my life is about: honesty.

Not pretending everything is figured out. Not pretending creativity always feels inspiring. Not pretending dreams remain untouched by fear, responsibility, or practicality.

Just acknowledging that sometimes the dream never actually died.

Life simply got loud.

And maybe growing older is partly about learning how to hear yourself again.