A Dream With Bookkeeping

A dream is useful as a direction. A plan begins where a price appears.

To turn a wish into a project, you need to find out:

• what specific result is meant;
• what is required at the start;
• what stages exist;
• how much time and money will be needed;
• who has to take part;
• which risks can stop the work;
• what the first checkable result will be.

Bookkeeping does not kill a dream. It shows which version of it fits into reality.

Sometimes after the calculation the dream becomes smaller and nearer. Sometimes it turns out that the person wanted not the result itself but the feeling attached to it: freedom, respect, travel, belonging.

Then you can look for another way to get the main thing without buying the whole set of scenery.

A dream without a plan stays a pleasant inner film. A plan without a dream turns into well-organized movement of resources. Together they sometimes produce a life.

The dream of “opening a small café” looks like this on paper: rent, a fit-out to meet inspection requirements, an extraction hood, a dishwasher, a deposit for the supplier, two months of wages before the first revenue — and a person behind the counter from six in the morning, six days a week. After such a calculation it often turns out that a café was not what was wanted. What was wanted was to feed people and see them enjoy it. That is achieved by a dinner for eight on Saturday and costs about a thousand times less.

Bookkeeping does not cancel a dream; it names the price of one particular version of it. After that you can pay the full cost knowingly, or take the part the whole thing was started for.