Is This What You Envisioned?

Tags

Aspiring Writer, Corporate Life, Freedom, Reality, Writing

My wife and I were talking the other day before I had to go to work. We were just chit-chatting about our day when she said “I wish you could stay home today”.

This is something my wife regularly says to me before I go to work. We are not one of those couples that cannot wait to get away from each other because of kids or conflicting personalities.

My usual response to this is “I know, I wish I could too”. We usually just kiss and I leave for work. As I said before, this happens often but my mindset has changed of late. I am no longer happy with the idea of a corporate future and something occurred to me that I just had to laugh to myself with how crazy it sounded.

Almost all people that work for a corporate entity or really any job for that matter, has to ask someone else for freedom.

Now I know what you may be thinking “that is rather dramatic of you to say” and I know, it kind of is but that makes it no less true.

If I want to have a day off during the business week. I have to ask permission from someone else to do so. Whether to check for others who have the day off or that ever present imaginary number that floats over all workers heads called “vacation time” someone else has to give the OK in order for me to take a day off with my family.

I understand that people cannot expect to work and just take days off willy-nilly. I get that. But we, as humans, allow someone else to control our weekly freedom and that idea boggles my mind.

Just the idea of that concept pushes me to continue with my writing and freelance work.

The goal to someday be working. Look up from my computer and say to myself “I think I am going to take a break” then walk out of the room to tackle my daughter and roll around in a ticklish heap. This is the life that I strive for.

A life that requires no one but myself to dictate its freedom. Where you can do something you love and live off of it.

Not just live in the sense of financial stability but to really live.

I have always said that I do not want to be one of the people that lives to work but who works to live and I have lost sight of that over the past couple years and it is refreshing to be in a mental state where I can think of these constrictions and laugh at their absurdity, instead of blindly accepting that it is just a matter of course. That it is just the way things are.

Because the truth is. That is not just the way things are. It is the way you accept things to be. You make your own reality. No one else does.

So if you work in corporate America. Look around yourself.

Take a moment to soak in your surroundings and what you are doing and ask yourself.

Is this the reality that I envisioned for myself?

Inspiration

Tags

Dream, Focus, Gratitude, Inspiration, Support, Writing

Pursuing ones dreams is a daunting task. Sometimes I think to myself that this may go nowhere.

That I am going to this effort of writing this blog, writing my manuscript and pushing myself to make it in a field that many fail every day to break into.

Sometimes I think that what I have to say means nothing to no one. That my writing is awful. That my dream of becoming a writer is hopeless and will ultimately bear no fruit.

These types of things cross my mind all the time. They squeezed into my brain while I typed my first post. They force their way to the front when I am working on my novel and cause me to pause in my writing. Lose focus and want to quit.

But then, like the first star on a cloudless night. Something breaks the darkness that creeps its way into my thoughts and shakes its hold on me.

This came in the form of a comment on my last post. A commenter wrote this:

“…I have actually had this same dream since I was 13… You’ve inspired me through this blog to begin again. Thank you.”

Suddenly, the grip of self-doubt and fear vanish.

Gone are the thoughts that I am not good enough or that anything I write will fall dead. All from a comment and a very significant sentence:

“You’ve inspired me through this blog to begin again”

Do I want to become a writer? Of course I do. It is what I have always wanted.

What do I want to achieve with this blog? Exactly that sentence.

To inspire.

Who knows what will happen in the future. With my writing. With my blog. With my career.

But if I can inspire some of you on the way, that is achievement to me. That inspires me to continue. To push hard to achieve this goal.

I want others to feel like I do. That a contemporary job is not the only way to succeed. That living ones dreams is not just for the fortunate or the lucky ones. That if you work hard, these things can happen for you. Whatever they may be, they are attainable.

These self-defeating thoughts will continue to plague me. Of that, I am sure. But it’s the support of those around me that lift me back up.

It is the smile that my wife gives me when she sees that I am writing. The thought that someday, I will look up from working and not see a blue cubicle wall, but the sight of my son and daughter playing. The comment of gratitude from a reader for inspiring them.

That is my inspiration.