In Pursuit of Hopes and Dreams: It's Never Too Late!

I'm probably going to "date" myself here, but do you remember what your hopes and dreams were when you were a teenager, and when you were young?

This question probably doesn't mean much to you if you are younger than the age of maybe 35, but as we age beyond a certain point we sometimes pause and take stock of what has been and where we are... compared to where we "Once Upon a Time" thought we might be.

Interestingly enough, I thought I was going to be a writer! At least, when I was little, one of the things I often answered in response to the adult question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was I wanted to "tell stories!"

Here I am, all these years later, writing and basically telling stories!

Of course, what has not been told is the fact that I made considerable and lengthy sidetracks away from that original aspiration... on the whole in pursuit of what the world thought would be a more "sensible" path.

Even though I did take quite a few creative writing courses when I was at University, it wasn't something I really put to use. Instead I got a nice sensible business degree and moved forward with a nice sensible job path that mostly involved marketing, advertising, and being in business.

It didn't actually suit me... but it was the "appropriate" way to go. Right?

It really wasn't until all these many years later that I found myself gravitating back towards my roots and my root dreams of writing. I suppose I mostly have the Internet to thank for that, as well as the advent of print-on-demand.

Back in the 1990s at some point, I found myself sitting in a motivational and self-development retreat, and one of the workshop presenters made the very poignant statement that whatever it is you're doing it's never too late to change direction and above all "it's only too late if you don't start now."

It seems that there are often two paths we take as we go through life and pursue our dreams or - as the case may be -fail to pursue our dreams.

One is that we outright recognize that the path we originally chose was wrong, and we return to what our initial plans had been. The other path is that we reach a stage in our life where we actually don't really care whether we succeed or not, so we simply take the action needed to step forward. It may not be sensible, but so what?

I never really figured that I was interesting enough or had anything interesting enough to say to justify attempting to write a book. But in writing an online journal where there was a good chance nobody would ever read it at least I could feel like I was writing and on the chance somebody might like it I didn't have to produce something that warranted some publisher committing to print 2,000 copies of a book. I could just say what I wanted and if it was good somebody might point it out, and if it was no good well I'd be none the worse for wear.

In a sense, it is the writing equivalent of reaching the point where that old saying "dance like nobody's watching" applies.

If that makes it sound like I am not a risk-taker, that would be pretty accurate! I have almost always been someone reluctant to enter the game unless the percentages were substantially in my favor.

And so, these days I "write like nobody is reading" even though I know perfectly well that there are more than a few people who do read.

The joy of being in a decentralized blockchain venue like this is that I'm not answering to some persnickety editor who insists that I write something on a very specific topic and that it's exactly 800 words long.

And there's something very freeing about that!

I may not get an actual salary, but watching my small stack of Hive tokens slowly grow is reward enough!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2024-01-04 01:11 PST
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