‘We weren’t born to follow’
Ever since Cinderella freed herself from the castle, let’s just say, “Watch out, world.”
I did a wild and crazy thing today and bought Bon Jovi tickets. For April. It’s funny — I can barely get through days or even hours, let alone plan something six months from now.
They’re good tickets, too. Not great ones, but I’ve had it with Peanut Heaven. I consider it an investment in NOT flirting with vertigo.
How weird to be thinking ahead again. I didn’t realize how far down the rabbit hole I’d gone till I fretted over pushing the order button on Ticketmaster because, wow, I’m going to still be here? (I don’t mean alive — just in Florida, although “alive” and “Florida” don’t really belong in the same sentence, when you think about it.)
Nothing like a little progress to get a real look at how much you’ve allowed yourself to regress.
I snuck into a conference for a couple hours today. Well, I’d hardly call it “sneaking in” when I was a personally invited guest, but it was definitely “sneaking out” to go see what else was happening in the world.
And wow, was it cool to talk to people furthering their part-time passions with full-time gusto … other crazy writers who are making it (or who think they can make it) in this world, when meanwhile “everyone” tells me what a goldmine of talent I’m sitting on, totally wasting because I’m not using that very same talent to make a quarter-million dollars a year in my “free” time.
I dunno. I guess for as much of a “writer” as I’ve always considered myself, I’ve always used it as a support for other pursuits. I never thought much about trying to make a living as a writer. I always figured it would be a part-time pursuit, or a later-in-life hobby, or maybe even a second eighth career when I’ve mastered the other interests that currently dance through my head.
It’s too bad that you only get asked when you’re 17 years old, what you want to be when you grow up. It’s a question worth pursuing at least annually … we should be doing inventories of our skills and interests on a very regular basis. A lot of us find we’re really good at certain things and that we can build careers from them, but what did you want to be when you were little? What did people talk you out of doing? What wasn’t possible back when we were twee (like working with computers) that we can incorporate into those dreams we had when it was just us and our imaginary friends? What did we like doing but left behind because we forgot or because we moved on to something else but never truly lost our passion for and would do again in a heartbeat?
These are the questions I ask myself daily. What do we unintentionally give up in exchange for what we (un)intentionally pick up? And how can we have it all … and why shouldn’t we, if that’s what we want?