(New Podcast: Life With Donkeys)

Oscar Wilde was proud to admit he was a dreamer. “For a dreamer,” he wrote, “is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

Ever since I was a  contributing editor at WIRED magazine and Rolling Stone near the beginning of the digital age, I’ve had a dream.

I wanted to start a virtual creative online community, a supportive and safe place where creatives gathered to support one another and provide constructive feedback to each other. I wanted to see if the values of community could exist in a virtual context.

As the Internet grew and evolved  rapidly, I saw that so many of its open spaces and virtual communities had  been polluted by cruelty and hostility that just seemed to deepen.

A few years ago, as my blog began to grow and spread over the country, I saw my chance and took it. I created a group called the Open Group At Bedlam Farm, the name eventually changed to the Creative Group at Bedlam.

Today, I said goodbye to the dream. I left the group and turned it over to someone I love and respect. It was a happy decision.

I asked a good friend, Becca Addy, if she would take it over, and she said she would love to, and she did. It’s called simply “Creative Group” now. I wish it every good thing there is.

My first try at this dream didn’t go very well.

Like many things in my life and most things on the Internet, sponsoring and running this group was not simple, at times it got quite painful, even ugly.  At one point, I thought the group was simply going to blow up or dissolve.

I take  responsibility for the politics, cliques and anger that split the group into chunks and left it looking like Congress does now. It got away from me. I should have stopped it.  It was filled with controversy, grievance and anger. Private sub-groups formed to gossip and plot. People felt excluded. People were excluded. People posted angry messages.

People sent me outraged letters.

A whole bunch of people, some gifted, stormed out one night in a great huff. Nobody said goodbye. I thought of shutting down the group, but decided to hang onto the dream.

This next effort worked.

With little input on my part – I didn’t really know what to do – the group suddenly evolved, almost on its own, into just what I hoped it would be. The less I did, the better the group was. The more distant I was, the better the group seemed to fare. I’m not dumb, I get the message in that.

Creative Group will live and prosper, I still can’t help but see it as my baby, I will watch it with a big smile as it grows up some more, I will be cheering them on. This dream lives.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter all that much how one gets there, as long as one gets there. The group got there.  It is there. There was a happy ending. People can be civil and creative online.

It’s just like Disney says: dreams do come true.

Every day, I see brave and gifted people putting their work out their, every day there is something wonderful to read or see or think about.  Something surprising and compelling.

I can’t tell you how it happened, I can only beam with pride like a proud papa.

When people tell me  how safe they feel there, I want to cry.

This week, I realized it was time for me to move on. I have a ton of work to do that I love to do, and the truth is, I am not doing much more now than posting my blog posts up on the group.

Any decent leader knows when it’s time to go as well as to stay.  It’s time to let go of my dream.  I am called to do the work I am now doing, with my blog, the refugees, the Mansion, my photographs and writing.

I need to be my own Creative Group.

So this fairy tale ends well.  The bloodless and seamless transition is under way. No storming out. No angry manifestos, no nasty comments. We can grow. We can learn.

The best thing I did was start the group, and then back away and let these good people chart their own course. They have.  Creative Group is the safe, gentle and encouraging creative community I wished for.

I’m not joining, at least for awhile. They don’t need me peeking over their shoulder. And I’m in search of the next dream.

What I don’t want is to give up on dreaming. Hold fast to dreams, wrote the poet Langston Hughes,”for if dreams die then life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” I have always been more disappointed by the things I didn’t do than the ones I did so.

Good luck, Becca. Check it out if  you wish.