Dream

Dare to Dream

I've always been a "Dreamer". When I was younger I would dream of becoming a famous musician or a world class athlete. I would dream about anything and everything. I remember as a young kid I would dream of being a ninja, an nba player or a world famous rockstar. I loved to dream. Dreaming has always been my favorite hobby. Dreaming took me to any place that I wanted to go. I could meet and be with anyone I wanted to be with at any time I wanted to be. I didn't dream of money I mostly dreamt of having freedom of expectations. A freedom to do with my time and only work for myself. An entrepreneurial life that I can choose to explore. I would dream but when I would get out of my head and back into reality I had no idea what dream I should pursue. I didn't know if I was really that good at any one thing that I could trust myself that I could venture out on my own and do what I truly loved as a career. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I've always had a good work ethic. Having a strong work ethic was engrained in me at an early age. My parents were always hard workers and I was raised on the belief that if you work hard enough at something you can achieve something that you desired. But me being a dreamer I set the bar high on myself to live a life where I had the means and ability to do anything I want when ever I want. I never wanted to work for someone else. I'm hard headed and I have trouble taking orders from people. You see climbing a corporate ladder didn't feel right to me. Everything is so predictable. I don't want to start with entry level pay and then calculate the rest of my life at one company or one industry and live a life with boundaries. I feel weird to be honest. I am not happy to pursue any sort of career. What I do want to pursue is art. You see I love art and I love creating art. I love art because art has the transcendent ability to touch on peoples emotions in a variety of different ways.

“I just wanted to do what I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it."

You see the thing that is most difficult about being a dreamer is that a dreamer tends to dream about alot of different things. I dreamed about anything and everything. My mind was like an IMAX theater displaying all these grandiose scenarios. I would dream of being an actor or a rapper or a comic. However, the thing about those professions is that they require me to be front and center. All eyes would be on me but for whatever reason that scenario makes me extremely uncomfortable. I have stage fright and avoid being the center of attention at all costs. I think I would dream of being noticed and respected. My favorite passion is to make people feel better than they already were. be able to express myself without the fear of negative judgment. I'm a self conscious person. Maybe not to the extreme but I do want to be respected. I didn't want to be a burnout kind of dreamer who is all anti establishment and complains about everything but doesn't do shit and make opportunitease happen. I knew that if I wanted to be more I had to do more. I had to work harder tahn anyone else. I had to be obsessed. I had to work harder and longer than anyone else. I have always been willing to work hard but when it came to working towards my dream it gave me a sense of purpose but first I had to define what my purpose was.

I remember when I just graduated from highschool and I got obsessed with roulette. I became so obsessed that I would work day and night for months trying to develop a betting algorithm that would make me rich. For those who don't know roulette is essentially a betting game with 50/50 probability. You basically bet on a ball that rolls around on a wheel with divets that are red and black and you bet on whether or not the ball landed on a red or black section of the wheel. Its a simple concept but casinos have made billions on this one game for a reason. My thinking was why not bet the minimum on a roulette wheel for a particular color and double down on the bet until eventually I won the initial guess. This type of betting pattern has been done before and was first introduced in the middle 19th century and it became known as the Martingale system. For months I would literally flip a quarter and write down heads or tails data in order to determine the probability of the likelihood of a patterned sequence that would occur depending on the amount of times a heads or tails would pop up. I know this sounds crazy but I was literally obsessed with this concept for 6 months and it wasn't until I went on a road trip with my family that I realized how crazy i had become over this one idea.

"I became so obsessed that I would work day and night for months trying to develop a betting algorithm that would make me rich."

Awakening

I was approached by a few members of my family who were trying to talk some sense into me. I do appreciate their concern and their words did at least influence me to diversify my thinking. Shortly after our family vacation I felt that I needed to shift gears away from probability and gambling mathematics and work on something a little less risky. After my divergence from roulette and probability I had maybe a week or two of what I would call no focus. You see I had been obsessed with probability for over half a year, and now I was scared to pursue my next idea because maybe that idea would suck too. At the time I had recently started I guess kind of dating a coworker of mine who was a few years older than me and I knew that it would most likely end in f had this great girl it felt good to write out what I was feeling. After our confusing relationship ended I became obsessed with writing. I would write everyday and every night for months on end with no intended purpose. I would write to just write. I was heartbroken and it felt good to write. Looking back at it I feel like I was very dramatic in my feelings but writing did help alleviate some tension in my brain.lames so I decided to start writing down the emotions I felt when I was with her. I figured "Why not keep a personal diary of what I am experiencing with this amazing women in some sort of poetic format." You see I always enjoyed good lyrics and i love words. When I was dating this girl I started writing out how I felt about her and the situation and it came out in a very creative and clever pattern. Once the dating situation went south I decided that I should still write because even though I was sad that it was relieving to write out my thoughts. I didn't give a fuck about the stigma about guys being soft because they write their feelings. I wrote only for myself and not for anyone else. I didn't realize how much I loved writing. Writing gave me the opportunity to express myself and be anyone I wanted to be. Writing gave me freedom. When I found my love I fell so deeply in love with writing that I can think of nothing else. Writing is so honest. Writing is so pure. Writing is flexible but still firm. Resilient yet malleable. I fell in love with writing. I am grateful for meeting lily because if it wasn't for her I would have never have loved writing the way that I do now. Writing brings me joy. Shortly after the unraveling of my quasi relationship with Lily writing then became my only focus. All I would do was write, but not for any particular purpose. I just wrote because it felt good to write. I would write while I was supposed to be listening in class. I would write while at work. Eventually all of my writing lead me to the idea that I should develop a character from these poetic rambles. You see all of my writing tends to rhyme.

I enjoy rhyming and the art of creating unique sequences of words that can entertain and impact people. I thought about why not write a story about how I was feeling at that particular time and have the entire book rhyme. I thought "why not?" What did I really have to lose? At the time I was first starting to work on my book idea I had already changed majors nearly a half a dozen times. School felt like a burden and an inconvenience because all I wanted to do was write. However having taken out high interest student loans it wasn't in my best interest to drop out of school and pursue writing full time. I just had absolutely no passion for school or really formal education. I always enjoyed teaching myself new things. I felt obligated to take out these loans to pay for an education that I didn't care to have. For a while I tried the school/writing balance but that didn't really work out. The last semester I attended at Sacramento State I was only registered for 2 classes and they were both poetry classes. I figured if I was going to school I thought to myself, "why not learn a few things from some traditional poetry classes?" When I was in these classes it was great to hear from other talented young writers. My poetry teacher didn't really like me. I never felt comfortable being told how to write and that my writing wasn't good because I didn't properly structure my poem correctly. I was stubborn to change my writing style and despite my fellow classmates appreciating my writing my poetry teacher still ended up giving me a D for dumbass in both of my classes. After that semester I decided to take a break from Sacramento State and instead regroup myself and figure out what the hell to do with my life. School was going nowhere and each semester that I remained enrolled got me that much deeper into debt. I was at a crossroads but then I just decided that I should write down how I feel like I am at a crosswords with my life and I think my honest words could help someone down the line. From that point on I decided that I was going to decide what I was going to do with my life and not let debt control my life and tell me what to do with my life. I have every intention to pay off the entirety of my student loan debt and realize that its going to be extremely difficult to pursue my writing as a career and be able to afford to pay $750 a month just so I don't get bothered by debt collectors but I am willing to sacrifice anything and everything for my pursuit to one day become a working author and not just a working author/waiter. I wait tables to get by, but I have no passion for it. My advice is if you love something then follow it no matter what. Nothing else matters.