Yesterday I went with a real estate agent and saw two possible locations for my Second Dream and today I tried to digest it and wrap my brain around everything. It was a bit overwhelming, to tell you the truth. All the legalities and big dollar signs and figures that were thrown at me in our conversations, wow. Half the time I could have sworn they were making things more complicated than they should be and the other half I swore they could have been speaking a whole other language for all I knew. It's so complicated. I don't recall it being this complicated for Hulk's but then again I leaned on my Korean friends, business contacts and Snickers to deal with the complications of the paper work and legalities.
This is real. This is really really. This is my reality; I'm making my Second Dream a reality. It's as exciting as it is scary but as scary as it is it will never be as scary as it was picking up and leaving Hulk's in Korea. I've already come so far, there's no turning back, and I often catch myself reminding myself that I didn't come this far only to come this far. I can't stop now.
"Reality just sets in," he said. "What reality?" I asked. This was the end of a conversation that happened the other day and it stuck with me. It's been lingering in my head, perhaps more than it should have. My friend never did respond to my question, beyond raising one of his eyebrows and giving a little bit of a giggle that is.
What reality sets in, I still don't know. I don't get it.
When we're little kids the teacher asks us in school, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", and they're not the only person that asks us this as we get older. But where along the way do we decide to not be our own dream? Where is the dream lost or pushed aside and why do we do this? It seems like a false sense of hope and a setup for disappointment, asking kids to think of this big magically person they dream to be only to then not expect them to honestly become such dream.
When I was younger, I was always changing my answer. I was that kid that said they wanted to be a teacher during the day, a pilot at night, a wrestler on the weekends, and a writer in my spare time. I never did become a pilot. I think the amount of math turned me off. I hated math. I did become a teacher though. I taught Sunday School, VBS and lead the Junior High class at church. I also was a program leader at a summer camp and taught ESL here in Toronto, Canada and in Korea. And now I'm a fighter -- a professional boxer -- and I write about my life on a homepage I've maintained for over 12 years in addition to writing for other websites throughout the years. I remember one of my friends, in public school, answering that she wanted to be a mom -- a full time, stay-at-home-mom. I laughed at her and said she was wasting her dream. I told her she needed to dream bigger. Not to disrespect moms but in my eyes, when I was young, I viewed the future as a golden ticket to be anyone and anything I wanted to be and for me that included a lot of schooling and becoming someone so different than anyone else I had ever met before, hence the multitude of jobs I wanted to sport. My friend ended up becoming that full time mom she dreamt about. She's a mom of three beautiful girls and we still joke about that day I got in trouble by the teacher for teasing her to dream bigger.
Today I returned to the library and returned to slaving away on my business proposal there. And as I typed my stuff up and scribbled notes down in my book, I wondered how many people here are doing like me, trying to make their dream a reality.
How many people are really living the dream?!
Both my brothers are living the dream, as far as I know that is. My one brother picked up one day and moved to New York to chase his dream of being a freelance photographer. That was back in the day, when I was in high school, over a decade ago, and he hasn't returned since. He's living his dream. As for my other brother, he always wanted the white picket fence and family, and that's exactly what he has, plus a few four-legged members in his family. He's living the dream too. But what about others?
I have friends I've known for years who I can't say I honestly know what they do for a living or are striving for. They spend 40 plus hours at a job I have no idea about.
Everyone has their own dream but are they living it? To "live the dream" doesn't mean to have a lot of fame or fortune or to even have a job that you created on your own. We all define it differently, like my brothers. They both have different dreams and both would never be able to be happy living the others' dream.
I'm rambling here, I know. I guess my point is where and when did people start losing sight of their dream and go astray? We all have one life and I don't know about you but I sure as hell am not going to waste it being someone I don't want to be. Being a pro athlete is hard, being an entrepreneur is super hard too, and they both make for a hard life but at the end of the day I can say I'm living my dream or at least working at keeping my dream alive and getting closer to really expanding upon it.
We all have dreams, aspirations and hopes, but how many of us are really proactive about them?
This is real. This is really really. This is my reality; I'm making my Second Dream a reality. It's as exciting as it is scary but as scary as it is it will never be as scary as it was picking up and leaving Hulk's in Korea. I've already come so far, there's no turning back, and I often catch myself reminding myself that I didn't come this far only to come this far. I can't stop now.
"Reality just sets in," he said. "What reality?" I asked. This was the end of a conversation that happened the other day and it stuck with me. It's been lingering in my head, perhaps more than it should have. My friend never did respond to my question, beyond raising one of his eyebrows and giving a little bit of a giggle that is.
What reality sets in, I still don't know. I don't get it.
When we're little kids the teacher asks us in school, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", and they're not the only person that asks us this as we get older. But where along the way do we decide to not be our own dream? Where is the dream lost or pushed aside and why do we do this? It seems like a false sense of hope and a setup for disappointment, asking kids to think of this big magically person they dream to be only to then not expect them to honestly become such dream.
When I was younger, I was always changing my answer. I was that kid that said they wanted to be a teacher during the day, a pilot at night, a wrestler on the weekends, and a writer in my spare time. I never did become a pilot. I think the amount of math turned me off. I hated math. I did become a teacher though. I taught Sunday School, VBS and lead the Junior High class at church. I also was a program leader at a summer camp and taught ESL here in Toronto, Canada and in Korea. And now I'm a fighter -- a professional boxer -- and I write about my life on a homepage I've maintained for over 12 years in addition to writing for other websites throughout the years. I remember one of my friends, in public school, answering that she wanted to be a mom -- a full time, stay-at-home-mom. I laughed at her and said she was wasting her dream. I told her she needed to dream bigger. Not to disrespect moms but in my eyes, when I was young, I viewed the future as a golden ticket to be anyone and anything I wanted to be and for me that included a lot of schooling and becoming someone so different than anyone else I had ever met before, hence the multitude of jobs I wanted to sport. My friend ended up becoming that full time mom she dreamt about. She's a mom of three beautiful girls and we still joke about that day I got in trouble by the teacher for teasing her to dream bigger.
Today I returned to the library and returned to slaving away on my business proposal there. And as I typed my stuff up and scribbled notes down in my book, I wondered how many people here are doing like me, trying to make their dream a reality.
How many people are really living the dream?!
Both my brothers are living the dream, as far as I know that is. My one brother picked up one day and moved to New York to chase his dream of being a freelance photographer. That was back in the day, when I was in high school, over a decade ago, and he hasn't returned since. He's living his dream. As for my other brother, he always wanted the white picket fence and family, and that's exactly what he has, plus a few four-legged members in his family. He's living the dream too. But what about others?
I have friends I've known for years who I can't say I honestly know what they do for a living or are striving for. They spend 40 plus hours at a job I have no idea about.
Everyone has their own dream but are they living it? To "live the dream" doesn't mean to have a lot of fame or fortune or to even have a job that you created on your own. We all define it differently, like my brothers. They both have different dreams and both would never be able to be happy living the others' dream.
I'm rambling here, I know. I guess my point is where and when did people start losing sight of their dream and go astray? We all have one life and I don't know about you but I sure as hell am not going to waste it being someone I don't want to be. Being a pro athlete is hard, being an entrepreneur is super hard too, and they both make for a hard life but at the end of the day I can say I'm living my dream or at least working at keeping my dream alive and getting closer to really expanding upon it.
We all have dreams, aspirations and hopes, but how many of us are really proactive about them?
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