A dream of a different life

I wonder if Captain Ahab had days when he just thought, "I just want to sleep in today. The whale will be there tomorrow." Opportunity, as we all know, is a very, very small window and I spend every day off my life breaking down walls and carving my own windows.

It's all too exhausting, of course.

I work 40 hours a week to stay competitive at my derivative job. My schoolwork keeps me up at all hours everynight. To add to all that stress, I'm transferring schools next semester where I have the freedom (freedom!) to design my own curriculum. It took me three hours to write the first draft of my own curriculum... Three long hours in a coffee shop and I'm still not happy with it.

And there's the important and rather urgent matter of getting my dream job before the end of the year. I love the company I work for, the benefits, the people... but, I've reached the point of no return. I'm not in love with my industry anymore. And for the first time since I started working at 17, I want something else for myself. A dream of a different life.

Failure. What a filthy word. I'm up all hours at night to get straight A's. I obsessively check job postings at my dream company and I'm already hatching up a plan to go to graduate school early 2014 and trying to plan how my company will pay for my spring and summer semester in college. All this planning. I feel like a general plotting warfare. Not to mention countless hours hunting down scholarship money.

I refuse to fail.

Last summer, nobody wanted to hire me as an intern. Not one company.

Right after I had an emotional breakdown over being unwanted as a lowly intern I was hired at the Governor's Office. One of the best experiences of my life and an excellent resume addition, if I may say so myself. During the course of my summer internship I was promoted to Sushi chef at work, my pay got bumped up and soon after my internship ended, I was moved up to management.

 Things are wonderful in my life right now and I realized, while I was talking to a dear friend, that all these wonderful things didn't fall from the sky. I worked ridiculously hard for all of it. I worked 60 plus hours a week to make something, everything happen. I figured, I finally cracked the code to the art of making dreams come true. You don't sit around for a fairy godmother (although one would be fabulous!).. for all my tarot readings, feng shui, astrology and aura clearings... the two things that have really worked is when I put myself out there, took every opportunity in the table and made things happen.