Once upon a time I was a child. I was a child with dreams and aspirations, goals and passions. I still have dreams, goals, and aspirations but now the passion has slowly mutated into rage and bitterness. Bitterness not in the old man sense, but one day I will be an old man and if not dealt with properly a bitterness that could be construed into old man bitterness. Maybe I should have paid closer attention in my behavioral science class.
Bitter is a fickle feeling. It’s a selfish institution that robs a man into not seeing properly and blinding him of sense and rationality. The person that tells you “You’ll never be able to achieve your dreams” is bitter. Such a pessimistic person can spread their message far more convincingly then the optimistic opposite. It’s far easier to not accomplish anything then to accomplish something. It’s an easy trap to fall into where the pessimist eventually becomes the voice in your head and you believe you can’t achieve your dreams. At this point you become the bitter pessimist spouting your nay-saying propaganda.
As a child your dreams seem so close. It feels like you can be a famous actor tomorrow and if you just bought a guitar you’d be Jimi Hendrix. As we get older we buy a guitar and some of us practice and spend time attaining mastery, while others realize it’s harder then it looks and put it in a closet somewhere. I eventually put my guitar in the closet, but I got really good at it first.
I’ll be 30 this December. You’d think that by the time I turned 30 I’d stop dreaming but I don’t. I still believe that the next UCF game I go to or the next song I put on facebook or the next article I write will be the one that gets me noticed, the one that someone sees and says “He’s the next big thing.” I’ve always wanted to be the next big thing. I believe in greatness, I believe in dreams and I believe in cheeseburgers.
The difference between a dream and a cheeseburger is obvious; you can’t feed your family a dream. There is a fine line between ambition in pursuing dreams and wasting time. Dreams need to be attainable in reality before they can be goals. In the meantime you better feed your family and pay your rent, handle your business. It’s unrealistic to think a 30-year-old man with a family is as capable of spending the same amount of time on chasing a dream as his single 20-year-old counterpart. I don’t have the time or the energy to be a rock star any more, nor do I have the same interest in it anymore. I used to write every second of the day, now it’s almost a hobby; the thing that I’m most passionate about in the entire world has been turned into a hobby because of cheeseburgers.
So I say this to the world: I won’t stop. I will never ever stop. I will not listen to the voice of nay saying, I will not succumb to the frustrations of rejection and futility caused by my decisions. I shall write and write and write and I will push my way into a writing job, if I were paid to write then I’d have time to write. Time is money and for now I need to do what I have to, to pay the rent. But one day you will pay me for this and I can finally have my dreams and my cheeseburgers. Thanks for reading and don’t ever give up.
