The Lie of Chasing Your Dreams

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Everyone is a creative and everyone dreams. But most people get to a point in their lives where they’re told, either by society, family or themselves, that they have to give up their creative aspirations and get a real job.

Those of us who’ve had this happen, and it should be everyone, have been lied to.

We’ve been told that what we want out of life isn’t as important as what society wants from us.

This lie permeates culture, rots dreams and destroys confidence.

This destruction causes all of us to second guess who we believe ourselves to be and reminds us that society has its own motives.

We must work for the machine. We must strive to make our country better, regardless of th damage it causes to ourselves and who we are.

Never give in to this machine. Be who you are. Create a life for yourself, create and dream.

We need less cogs in the machine and more framers of creativity.

Migraine

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It started behind my right ear, dug in deep to the inner cortex and moved towards my frontal lobe, stopping, pushing and holding until I released the pain in a torrent of liquid.

My hearing heightened as if I living in Hell’s Kitchen.

But it didn’t stop, I felt punished and devoid of my thought processes.

My brain, pulsed, ached and pounded within my skull. The force felt like it was splitting through the tissue covering my grey matter, but it didn’t desist, it kept coming, striking and throttling my head .

I lay motionless. My body worn and pushed beneath the surface of who I was.

Each throttling threw my head into my hands as I curled into a fetal position.

I’d regressed until I felt the suddenness of the chemical hit the blood stream.

My hands fell to my sides, my head resting softly against the pillow until my eyes closed and I blacked out.

Living up to your own expectations.

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as a child growing up in Utah, my father was overbearing.

He was a big man, at least to me growing up.

When I was a teenager I was thin and constantly was called skinny by bullies and my father.

I always wanted to live up to his expectations so I drank protein drinks which killed my stomach, lifted weights all because I wanted my father to love me.
What I discovered afterward is that he was thin in school and maybe he didn’t want me to be that way.

Later, I joined the military only to be discharged soon after arriving at boot camp.

I felt like I let him down by not being able to finish boot.

In the last year I discovered all the times I was trying to make him love me, I wasn’t loving myself.

I gave up on myself as a child because I wanted my father to love me, but in the last year I discovered I should love myself over anyone else.

Now that I’ve put this in practice for a year I’m finding that my life is better caring about myself and not those around me.

I love my father though I don’t talk to him anymore, but he taught me that the love I have for myself is more important than the love anyone else will have for me.

I no longer worry about living up to his expectations, only my own.

Writing, Visions and Story

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Our dreams are often eclipsed by what we assume is the life we’re supposed have rather than life we actually have.

Our actuality is different from the way we see the world, the way we read the world and the way we write the world.

Our writing describes the way we see the things around us. The river we fished as kids, the smell of the smoke in morning when the farmers would burn weeds and the way our grandparents house always smelled of fresh cookies regardless of whether there were actual cookies available.

These words are the way we see the laughable things we see in the painting before us. The way the light hits the top of trees outside our house, the way the dirt smells when we’re planting the garden and how things we see may be differ from the way others see it.

Each day we write and engage the world around us informs our thoughts about our writing and whether we trust that our writing is on the correct track and not being disturbed by the things we don’t see around us, like the negative thoughts running through our heads.

Our negative thoughts about our writing should be silenced when we finish a new book, but they often get louder.

We chase our writing, when it should be trying to keep up with what we want to write and not us keeping up with the story coming out.

Keeping up with the words is our motivation, and it’s a worthy one.

Going Home, Writing and Another Step Closer

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Life is about struggle, but with each day we find the passage through and we learn that we’re headed in the right or wrong direction, but that direction is ultimately our choice.

In the next couple months I’ll be making a big change to increase how much time I’m able to spend on writing.

My wife and I have decided to move away from the life we’ve made in Las Vegas and go home.

Both of us were raised in Utah and growing up there we learned to fish, camp and discover the outdoors.

My favorite times as an adult have been when I took my son fishing, camping in my aunt’s backyard with my wife and kids and showing my son the lake where I learned to fish.

I want to give my son the childhood I had, while he’s still young enough to enjoy it but old enough to appreciate it.

We’ve planned this out and, well maybe I’ve planned it out more than she has, but going home will be a great exercise in persistence, fortitude and realizing our strengths as a family.

My wife is nervous, I’m excited as are our kids, but with this move we’ve planned for me to work a minimum of days so I can focus on writing, but as with any plan there may be detours.

I know that life will change, but without change life everything is less fun and more predictable.

Being predictable doesn’t help us grow. Staying in one place doesn’t make us change.

Leaving the only place our kids have known as home will open their eyes to the wonders of the outdoors and the life of living in Utah, which is far better for kids than Las Vegas.

Be it choice or intervention, we’re changing places for the good of our kids, ourselves and it’s one step closer to my dream reality.