Monday, June 12, 2006

Weekends are so strange lately.

My life is so different on the weekends, it becomes a very introspective time. Much like the cherished time I spent travelling.

Alex's band, The Free Press, had a show at the Rivoli as part of the North By Northeast music festival. It was a late, late show, playing after Fairfield, a band fronted by former Big Wreck artists.

I don't know if you remember Big Wreck, but they were an awesome band. A pretty tough act to follow. Sadly, it was not their best show and Alex was understandably upset.

He started talking about his dream. And said that he doesn't believe that anyone who's not IN this industry would understand his passion for his music career.

Of course I don't like to be told that I don't understand. I suppose I wouldn't mind if someone said "You don't understand what it's like to have cancer" or "have a baby" or "be Prime Minister" because they're right. I mean, I've had my brush with death but I didn't know it and didn't have to live with the knowledge that I was probably about to die. I've experienced pain, but have never created another human being nor had it fight to get out of my body through a very tiny opening. And I've lead projects and groups, but I've never been in a position in which every answer is the wrong one and is furthermore criticized openly by almost everyone in an entire country, plus a few foreigners.

But I have dreams, I protested in my head, don't I?

I panicked when I had trouble thinking about what I really want. It took some time. Some tearful moments of soul searching.

And I suddenly realized that many of the dreams I once had have been put on hold, forgotten or deliberately trashed.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a performer. I didn't know what, exactly, but I wanted to be on stage. I would have been good at it, whatever it was. I guess I liked acting, although singing was great too but I just didn't have the training in it to do it well enough.

But I realized that this was a ridiculous dream. The road was hard and the end result, even if I did "make it", probably wasn't something that I really wanted anyway. Long hours, mean people, difficulties fitting in your family life.

Fine. So I focussed on something more... responsible. I was going to be a writer. I love writing. I wrote reams and reams of stuff when I was in my teens. I loved writing stories. I still have everything in binders, stashed somewhere in my bookcase, or under my bed at my parents' house.

And then I went to school and realized how many great writers there are. And that writing for a living is not what I thought it would be. Journalism was about business and manipulation and marketing, not about learning and rarely about telling a story.

So I didn't want to do it anymore.

Then I fell in love with the web and it was good. It didn't disappoint. And I did a good job and got promoted and learned and was interested and excited. But I'm not content to just be good. I want to be great. I don't think I've hit "great" yet.

So that is a dream: be great. Develop some "great" Web feature.

But I still love writing. Sometimes. When I feel it.

I don't think I want to do it for a living - although if someone would pay me to write what I write, then fantastic. But I don't think that's going to happen. So that leaves the question: what am I going to write to achieve my dream? A book? I wonder what it would be about. And who would read it.

But my soul cries out for it. Quietly. Because it is also plagued by self-doubt. And when I'm doubting that I CAN do something, I pretend that I don't WANT to do it.



I also want to travel. As I wrote in a comment in my last blog, I want to suck all their is to learn out of the land and its people, and that's not something you can do on a vacation. I want to live another life for a while to know what it's like. I want experience to teach me and change me.

But I made a decision to put aside my extensive travel dreams in order to achieve another, more important goal, which is a family. Of course, this is one goal I cannot achieve on my own, although I believe I'm doing the right things to make it possible.

So don't tell me that I don't understand dreams.
Maybe I'm just a little less passionate and a lot less stubborn. Maybe I give up too easily or I'm afraid of not finishing so I don't want to start. Maybe there is something out of my control that is preventing me from realizing my dream.

Of course I have dreams.
They are dead all around me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No not dead, just sleeping before you decide to again awaken them with a desire to live them

Anonymous said...

Cath, you still have your dreams. You also are a grown up and you understand about being responsible - paying bills, laying down roots and the like. It's a fine line. You're walking it. Tree.