A clear action can give your hope something sturdier than a rehearsed possibility.

Hope kept entirely in the imagination has to be maintained by imagining harder. You picture the outcome again, adjust the details, and the picture grows more vivid without getting any nearer, which is tiring in a way that is hard to name. One real step changes the material the hope is made of, because something outside your head is now holding part of it.

Take the smallest genuine action toward whatever you have been picturing: the email, the enquiry, the first measurement. Rehearsing it once more will teach you nothing new, and doing a piece of it will.