Practical Dreamers
Practical Dreamer’s Handbook
by Sarah & Paul Edwards

 Mary Ann Halpin
Taking Action: Make Time for Your Dream

Lesson: “It has nothing to do with luck. It’s about slowing down your life enough that you can find a creative way to make the changes you want to make.”

    The woman  was sitting on her front porch reading. A breeze rustled through a nearby stand of Jeffrey pines. Periodically the cranky chatter of stellar blue jays would draw her attention from the page. She’d smile as she watched their antics, then lazily turn her gaze back to the book in her lap. Clearly this was a person at peace with a plentitude of time. It was a pleasant, but otherwise unremarkable scene, unless one knew what this person’s life had been like only a few years ago.

           In 1996, Mary Ann Halpin and her husband Joe Croyle were operating a 5000 square foot photography studio in downtown Los Angeles. Although they shared the studio with another photographer, the high overhead it represented had become a tough taskmaster, forcing them to work long, l0 hour days, six days a week. The pressure to be creative under such a grueling schedule was fatiguing and yet no matter how hard they worked, they were always a little behind.         

“We were so stressed,” Mary Ann remembers, “but we thought if we kept focused on our goals and worked harder things would eventually get better.” But dedication wasn’t enough. Their stress mounted when they learned that their partner hadn’t paid his half of the rent for the past six months. They feared any morning they’d arrive to find the studio locked and their equipment impounded.            

Then the 42-year old husband of a close friend was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and they drug their exhausted bodies to and from the hospital and the studio to sit by his side into the wee hours of the night. “That was the turning point for us,” Mary Ann recalls. “Our friend’s graceful death taught us a lot about living. It gave us the courage to put happiness in life above all other goals.”            

Immediately after the Memorial service, Mary Ann and Joe packed up the downtown studio and set up shop on a reduced scale in their home. Then they headed for a weekend retreat with friends who had a home in the mountains. “The mountain air cleared our minds and gave us a new perspective,” Mary Ann told us. Although they had no money for a down payment, in June of that year they began looking for a weekend cabin of their own. By September they’d moved in to their own log cabin. To their surprise, the lease-purchase offer they made on the cabin was accepted!           

They now work four days a week in their LA home/office/studio and relax and enjoy life the other three days a week in Pine Mountain. “People are always saying to me, ‘You’re so lucky!’” Mary Ann points out.  “But it has nothing to do with luck.  It’s figuring out what you value, what makes you happy and what brings you peace, and then slowing down your life enough that you can find a creative way to make the changes you need to make. So many of my friends in the city tell me they don’t have time to get away. But we all have time; we just have to decide how we want to use it.”  

Visit Mary Ann and Joe at www.maryannhalpin.com

More Practical Dreamers        Sample Chapter
        Tell the World about Your Dream      Create Your  Dream-in-Progress Teams 
Practical Dreamer's Handbook        Dream Tests Quiz        Practical Dreamer Quiz
                Practical Dreamer Opening Page                   What Readers Are Saying                  Meet Sarah & Paul                 E-Mail Us

          Return to The Simple Good LifeSM home page
       Have the time for what you love with those you love in
       a place, at a pace and for a price you can afford