Dreamin'
I read this great post by Deb Ng over at the Freelance Writing Jobs blog this morning entitled "What is your Dream Writing Job?" I've been reading Deb's blog for a few months now, so I'm starting to understand how her Dream Writing Job is coming true, but it was interesting to read the responses from commenters about their dream writing jobs.
Oddly enough, not everyone sees writing a best-seller as the fulfillment of their "writing dreams," though you'd be hard-pressed to find any writer who'd turn such recognition down. In fact, not everyone who's a writer actually wants to be one: some aspire to be editors, publishers or webmasters and writing is only a means to an end. The responses were both diverse and inspiring - a great many people had already reached their writing dreams and were living the life they had always wanted.
I was tempted to leave a response of my own. I tried, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't fit my "dream" into a three to five sentence comment on a blog. Here, a few hours and a generous dose of caffeine later and I still can't seem to do it.
Can the "job of your dreams" really be that simple when you're an entrepreneur, self-employed, a member of the creative economy and find it impossible to see the world in the black-and-white terms of self-help gurus, snake-oil salesmen and ideologically idiotic politicians?
I don't think it's a bad thing to have complicated dreams, or to accept that what you want today might not be what you want tomorrow. I've found that as I've gotten older my goals have coalesced a little bit - I no longer flit from one aim to another, and I tend to focus on more long-term goals than on short-term comforts.
I want many things, not all of them sane, rational or even meta-physically possible based on our current understaning of the universe and existence. The things I want don't necessarily make sense, and they don't necessarily complement each other - in fact some of them are outright contradictions.
Someone once said that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. After almost 30 years of making plans I've almost gotten to where I can just catch a glimpse of life racing by (thanks, in large part, to the world's greatest wife).
So yeah, I'm going to keep on dreaming, probably, but I'm also going to keep on doing things in the here and now that make life better for myself, for her and for everyone else because, after all, life is the one dream we only get to wake up from once.
Oddly enough, not everyone sees writing a best-seller as the fulfillment of their "writing dreams," though you'd be hard-pressed to find any writer who'd turn such recognition down. In fact, not everyone who's a writer actually wants to be one: some aspire to be editors, publishers or webmasters and writing is only a means to an end. The responses were both diverse and inspiring - a great many people had already reached their writing dreams and were living the life they had always wanted.
I was tempted to leave a response of my own. I tried, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't fit my "dream" into a three to five sentence comment on a blog. Here, a few hours and a generous dose of caffeine later and I still can't seem to do it.
Can the "job of your dreams" really be that simple when you're an entrepreneur, self-employed, a member of the creative economy and find it impossible to see the world in the black-and-white terms of self-help gurus, snake-oil salesmen and ideologically idiotic politicians?
I don't think it's a bad thing to have complicated dreams, or to accept that what you want today might not be what you want tomorrow. I've found that as I've gotten older my goals have coalesced a little bit - I no longer flit from one aim to another, and I tend to focus on more long-term goals than on short-term comforts.
I want many things, not all of them sane, rational or even meta-physically possible based on our current understaning of the universe and existence. The things I want don't necessarily make sense, and they don't necessarily complement each other - in fact some of them are outright contradictions.
Someone once said that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. After almost 30 years of making plans I've almost gotten to where I can just catch a glimpse of life racing by (thanks, in large part, to the world's greatest wife).
So yeah, I'm going to keep on dreaming, probably, but I'm also going to keep on doing things in the here and now that make life better for myself, for her and for everyone else because, after all, life is the one dream we only get to wake up from once.
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Jules