barnacles

i've just been really into these guys lately

At the age of eighteen, they say your dreams are formed and you have a dream to pursue. At the age of twenty, you’re running for it full-throttle. By the age of thirty, you realize that life’s not conducive to the fulfillment of your dreams, and you try to reorganize your life around that. By the age of forty, you’re not fighting for your dreams but, rather, you’re just trying to cope, trying to endure life’s trials in all the ways you can. Or, at least, that’s how I perceive it. And what I’m seeing is that life is hard—pursuing your dreams or not pursuing them—and that the difference isn’t so much between practice but in mindset. The conclusion I’m drawing, then, is that (a) life’s a bitch and (b) we can either just cope or keep running. Whether we abandon our dreams and just cope, or whether we keep chasing our dreams no matter the apparent futility, life’s still going to be a bitch.

Life’s short, and we shouldn’t waste time.

Have fun.

Be willing to make mistakes.

Laugh a lot and love a lot.

Take everything in stride and with a grain of salt.

Be willing to forgive and be willing to be forgiven.

Pursue your dreams relentlessly.

When I went to college, I “knew” what I wanted to do with my life. By the end, I “knew” I didn’t want to do what I’d originally thought. With a degree useful in only one particular field (a field I don’t want to be in), I’ve been working at a variety of coffee houses for the past five years. I don’t hate it; I actually love it. The atmosphere is friendly, inviting, cordial; it’s laid-back and interesting; it’s lots of fun, and it sure beats the hell out of sitting in a (although it doesn’t pay as much). But I can’t complain: my bills are paid, I have leftover money to save, and I still have money to go on adventures and hang out with friends at bars or restaurants. Right now my aim in life is to make a living off my writing, and I’m taking this aim seriously. I’m an excellent writer, a great story-teller, and I’m creative to the core. I’ve written and self-published a handful of books, many of them doing very well, launching into the forefront of their genres. The most realistic thing I’m hoping for is to work at a coffee shop part-time and to write part-time.

I’m pursuing my dream and having fun in the meantime; I’m not letting the barriers to my dream keep me from running, and instead of coping I’m celebrating: celebrating friends and family, celebrating the littlest beauties in life, celebrating hope and the future, be it good or bad.

And you know what? This whole “rat race” is a bunch of shit. Everyone wasting their lives running after more money, more things. Bigger houses, nicer cars, expensive shit to make you look handsome and impressive. How is that any kind of life to live? The more shit you have, the more you have to worry about. And to make it worse, none of this delivers that which it’s supposed to: happiness. Life’s hard enough already, trying to heal it in the worst way possible isn’t helping. We’ve only got one life so we should live it up. Granted this doesn’t mean being an absolute idiot with total disregard to common sense, but it means not stressing out about every little thing, not making every situation a catastrophe, taking everything with a shrug of the shoulders and a quiet laugh. We should pursue experiences, pursue love and laughter, pursue doing something interesting and being unique and actually bringing something of value to wherever we are.

We take life too seriously. We really do. We lament, we bitch, we moan, we cause drama and then thrive off it. Everything’s defcon-9 and we lose sight of how great life can really be. I’m done taking life too seriously. I’m done catastrophizing every little thing that happens. I’m done making big deals out of merely-shrug-worthy incidents. I want to have fun, I want to take risks, I want to be willing to make mistakes. The Beast inside me has been tamed and caged for far too long. He needs to unfurl his true colors and extend those claws and find that eucalyptus. My goal’s in life are to laugh, to love, to become who I want to be. And no matter what happens, so long as I have friends and family, I know I’ll be all right.