― broken twig, Monday, 26 July 2004 18:11 (nineteen years ago) link
At what age [did you]/[do you expect to] give up on your dreams?
― Alba (Alba), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:14 (nineteen years ago) link
i wouldn't change anything - it's all been a great experience - but i will be glad to be moving towards something i really enjoy...
― anthony, Monday, 26 July 2004 18:20 (nineteen years ago) link
Excuse me for playing devil's advocate. I hope I'm not corssing the line here/
― broken twig, Monday, 26 July 2004 18:23 (nineteen years ago) link
19, when i got mary pregnant. man, that was all she wrote.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:23 (nineteen years ago) link
― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:32 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:35 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:37 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:39 (nineteen years ago) link
― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:40 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 26 July 2004 18:40 (nineteen years ago) link
where i've ended up is in a city i love with people that i love very much and with a life that is fulfilling in ways i couldn't have imagined at 20. and it's only now that i feel like i have the confidence and the ability to actually follow a career/dream that will make me happy in that dept. The other thing is that there were competing visions or dreams of how i saw my life so i sidestepped the big one and worked on some smaller ones. They turned out not to be that improtant once i had achieved them and i was left with the biggun.
if someone were to accuse me of not chasing my dream enough i guess i would have to say that you do it at your own pace, and this speed worked for me.
― anthony, Monday, 26 July 2004 19:55 (nineteen years ago) link
At the same time, I don't want to end up doing this the rest of my life, so I'm even more focused on my other goals in my free time.
― Gear! (Gear!), Monday, 26 July 2004 20:03 (nineteen years ago) link
God that sounds hippy shit. But it can work.
Mind you I dont think I shall ever own a house which is one wish of mine. But I wont feel jipped if it never happens.
― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 01:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― jim wentworth (wench), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 02:32 (nineteen years ago) link
Charm City, thy name is "Utopia".
― Evanston Wade (EWW), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:11 (nineteen years ago) link
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:12 (nineteen years ago) link
(my home keyboard is so much stickier than my work keyboard that it's hard to adjust -- no, really!)
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― Evanston Wade (EWW), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:15 (nineteen years ago) link
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:16 (nineteen years ago) link
I think its all about refocus and regrouping, innit.
― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:27 (nineteen years ago) link
― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 03:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 07:39 (nineteen years ago) link
― paulhw (paulhw), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 12:25 (nineteen years ago) link
― Porkpie (porkpie), Tuesday, 27 July 2004 12:26 (nineteen years ago) link
so how are we doing?
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 13:07 (thirteen years ago) link
:S
― conrad, Tuesday, 20 April 2010 13:09 (thirteen years ago) link
I turn 27 in four months and am coming to grips with the fact that I'm long past the point of put up or shut up- if I haven't done anything by now, the odds that I ever will are vanishingly small, and I haven't even gotten started on any of the things I wanted to do with my life.
― a black white asian pine ghost who is fake (Telephone thing), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:09 (thirteen years ago) link
good news for me, you don't ever have to give up on dreaming of a lottery win.
― just darraghmac tbh (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:11 (thirteen years ago) link
i am 30 this year and still working the phones so things are looking pretty :-\
― village idiot (dog latin), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:13 (thirteen years ago) link
phew at least i've graduated from phones into public service.
i'm not sure how much more i ever dreamed of than 9-5, with weekends and evenings off, reasonable SO, and health.
a rotten childhood has its benefits in grounding you in reality fairly quicklytbh.
― just darraghmac tbh (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:15 (thirteen years ago) link
I think the key to this is to have modest dreams.
― kissogram powers (Abbott), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:21 (thirteen years ago) link
My childhood dreams were to not be under my parents' authority and not to live in Whitehall, Michigan. Woohoo!!!! I am an success.
― Ask foreigners and they will tell you the gospel comes from America. (Laurel), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:43 (thirteen years ago) link
hate myself so much
― Nhex, Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:52 (thirteen years ago) link
We are exactly the same age! (August 18th)
About eighteen months ago I realised it was put up time - it's really hard now to get back into the mindset of someone of who felt they had time to play videogames or listen to music or whatever! I think an under-reported part of "follow your dreams" is 'the period of actively striving for them is really long and stressful and unpleasant'.
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:53 (thirteen years ago) link
(Although it's nice that Laurel suggests that when you achieve them things get pleasant again)
― Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 20 April 2010 14:56 (thirteen years ago) link
Well I mean take them in stages for best results. Then you can be achieving a little bit at a time -- every Supreme Dictator had to conquer the world one continent at a time.
― Ask foreigners and they will tell you the gospel comes from America. (Laurel), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 15:09 (thirteen years ago) link
My other dream is to have a dishwasher and enough room for my 20 boxes of books, both of which I've had in the past but am lacking at this time. Oh the cruel vagaries of fate and the real estate market.
And a closet. A closet would be nice.
― Ask foreigners and they will tell you the gospel comes from America. (Laurel), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 15:13 (thirteen years ago) link
I didn't get that "Oh, no! I'm getting old! Help!" feeling until I was in my late thirties. I don't know if that's proof of immaturity or what it is.
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Tuesday, 20 April 2010 15:14 (thirteen years ago) link
Not that my childhood sucked because it totally didn't and I was very loved and provided for, but the evangelical world is a restrictive one and I think I took religious demands a lot more seriously than my peers, plus small towns in the middle of nowhere are horrible horrible places to be young and/or different.
In my youth, I truly dreamed of: 1) not having to submit to an over-authority for everything from when I could sit down and read a book, to what shirt I wore, to whether I finished my peas at dinner; 2) to be completely free of everyone I knew that I wasn't related to, and never see them again; 3) and to have a normal adult sex life unconstrained by God's will for my life and sinfulness/shame.
Suggest that if your youthful dreams are healthy and happy ones that are good for you, you can continue to enjoy and appreciate your degrees of success all the fucking time!! If they are like to be a rock star so you can Show Them, or make your first million, or publish some original scholarly work that no one else ever thought of, or be famous or whatever...I mean I can imagine those ringing slightly hollow in time.
― Ask foreigners and they will tell you the gospel comes from America. (Laurel), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 15:28 (thirteen years ago) link
Weirdly I only started having "crazy" dreams well in my twenties (spurred by a growing frustration/disillusionment with the realities of office life)
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 15:32 (thirteen years ago) link
Today I have a round-numbered birthday. I still just paused over some adverts for overpriced FX pedals for a guitar I haven't even touched for a year. So, not yet, I guess.
I've been thinking lately it's not been the best decade cz I have very few ~achievements~ to look back on in it, but my quality of life right now is pretty decent in ways I thought it never would be. And it's weird noticing how my perspective has changed slowly on what's most important. Selling out to the teenage weirdo who thought that quietly frumpy overweight office workers were somehow THE OTHER (but didn't really have any better ideas either), but that seems pretty silly now, so who cares?
― falling while carrying an owl (a passing spacecadet), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 16:39 (thirteen years ago) link
HB!
As for this thread, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa etc etc
― Mr. Squee (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 16:41 (thirteen years ago) link
already have given up my goal of batting clean-up for the ny yankees, after that it feels pretty easy to let go of crazy dreams
― max, Tuesday, 20 April 2010 16:44 (thirteen years ago) link
my adult life has turned out more or less how I envisioned it when I was a teenager tbh
― Dr. Morbius' Moist Deployment (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 16:45 (thirteen years ago) link
max you are far too chilled and content for a dude your age - you have clearly found some secrets of happiness - maybe the secret is that there is no secret and one should just be happy to live in this world
― Mr. Squee (acoleuthic), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 16:45 (thirteen years ago) link
i just realized that 35 is equidistant from both 20 and 50 and perhaps this is why i am a little more lol introspective about this birthday compared to others. mostly i just see decisions i've made (not having kids, mainly) coming to define me a in a way i was not exactly prepared for even though i don't regret those decisions at all.
overall i'm pretty happy, but i've always had modest dreams. i married a great person, have a job i love, can pay my bills and travel more or less where/when i want to...things are nice. surely they could be more exciting, but they could always be more exciting. best not to focus on that.
― an outlet to express the dark invocations of (La Lechera), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 16:46 (thirteen years ago) link
i guess this means i don't have wild and crazy dreams and never have
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:48 (six years ago) link
aspirations are different from dreams. As are the types of dreams you have in your teens as opposed to your adult life.
not necessarily. a lot of my adult "dreams" are very similar to my teen dreamz. i still just want to create things and be able to support myself financially by doing so. that's basically what i dreamed about in high school. back then the things i wanted to make were songs, now they're more often visual things, and i'm sure when i'm in my 60s and 70s i'll still by trying (and failing) to make something. there's an archetypal "adult dream" that involves a happy family, a house that's paid off, your smiling kid graduating college and landing a steady job, retirement and fucking all night in a cruise ship or whatever, but it's not everyone's adult dream. if you don't have plans to have children and you don't really care about making a ton of money and passing on your accumulated wealth to someone, then you find yourself dreaming about different things.
― Karl Malone, Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:48 (six years ago) link
it's not everyone's adult dreamotm
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:49 (six years ago) link
the kids/college isn't any kind of dream - its just generally what people do.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:53 (six years ago) link
some peoplenot all people
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:55 (six years ago) link
also some people do dream of that
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:56 (six years ago) link
i am not one of them
Like that can be sold as a package, or as a discrete set of products a lot of the time that give an appearance of a dream..
I think an aspiration is, like you describe, the ability to keep making music - it doesn't matter if it fails. The dream might be to thrive and be successful in terms of recognition or even payment.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:56 (six years ago) link
xps
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:57 (six years ago) link
Yeah, I remember a high school class where the teacher asked everyone what their future dreams were. Almost everyone answered something like "married with a house, two kids, a [insert middle-class job]". It was seriously eye-opening for me.
3xp
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:57 (six years ago) link
I think it was the first time it occurred to me that suburbs like the one I grew up in exist because some people actually want to live there.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 15:59 (six years ago) link
as a young person i never allowed myself the dream of making things but now i doif anything, age has improved the quality and specificity of my dreams
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:00 (six years ago) link
Yeah, my experience was similar. That was at most a dream in the sense that I had close to zero expectation that someone could actually make a living out of something creative or even fulfilling in reality. My only real dream was to not depend on or have to listen to my parents.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:03 (six years ago) link
exactly!! my parents or anyone.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:05 (six years ago) link
I’m not scornful of that dream, because “home, kids” contains multitudes and is a fair summary of a pragmatic and rewarding life experience. That said, my “home, kids” dream is a Democrat’s dream of a cool city apartment with one little weirdo, no car, and an international vacation every year... not a Republican single family detached dwelling, SUV, and suburban school system with an active PTA
― rb (soda), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:10 (six years ago) link
there is a wide "not for me" area between scornful and dreamful
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:15 (six years ago) link
i guess i had dreams when i was a teenager that i would go into music. i used to mime along to records and stuff, imagining i was playing in front of a huge crowd, etc. i was on a cocktail of prescriptions at the time and used to have a lot of manic episodes so this would incorporate.
my parents were always very practical, they told me i could do art and music but i should always have a plan B and i should never go full-in on it. my dad was a musician so he was a bit more encouraging, buying me instruments an teaching me how to play and stuff. my mom (and stepdad) were entirely the opposite, never interested in my music, never once went to a show. anytime it came up (and it did a lot, my two brothers are musicians) they would ask me if i was making any money at it. anyways as a result i think i occurred a lot of shame about it.
after high school i went to a state college cos that is what you do even though i had no idea what i wanted to study. around this time i met a ton of musicians and friends and got involved in a scene. i took off school for a few years, it was a lot of fun, made lots of art and music. eventually i got into video art and graphic design and decided to try and go back to school. my parents threw a fit when they saw that i was taking "liberal arts classes" and gave me shit about wasting my life. that shame started creeping back in. eventually after a year or two and getting disilluioned with playing the same 3-4 shitty bars for beer money i had to make a choice to go on tour or to go to school and i chose school. of course i do nothing with my degree and my friends went on to be professional and successful musicians lol. yeah i kind of fucked myself by second guessing.
im still glad i went to school, and i got to live out a lifelong dream of going to Egypt, seeing the pyramids, etc. i wouldn't trade any of that back. and it's pointless to think "What if...?" but it's really tough sometimes to not. where i am career wise right now is alright but it's a job and that's it. the thing about music and art is you can do it just as a creatively fulfilling hobby thing to do, you can do that for the rest of your life. no reason to plug into a scene, be legitimized by publication, etc. so many creeps and hangers on, so many talentless hacks in any scene, you don't really need any of it.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:27 (six years ago) link
imo 25-26 is when i gave up entirely on love, art, etc.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:28 (six years ago) link
I didn't say anything about scorn, yeah. I really don't think Democrat vs Republican maps onto those differing lifestyle ideals, tbh.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:41 (six years ago) link
Growing up, I never really had a specific goal in life. Then, married at 21 and with a kid at 24, my goal was just to maintain our reasonably comfortable, reasonably happy family life — enough income for pop culture distractions and an environment conducive for our daughter to grow and thrive. I did that as my role shifted from husband to caregiver. In 2014 a real, attainable goal formed in me — get out of Mississippi and never look back — and my wife said "if you do that, you'll have to do it without me." So I've been sitting on my ass for three years trying to decide whether it's worth it to me to blow up my family (figuratively). So yeah, I'm a month away from 54 and I have a dream, and it's caused me nothing but misery.
― WilliamC, Saturday, 14 October 2017 16:43 (six years ago) link
My decisions only look like decisions in retrospect: at the time, they are the next thing, but end up having lasting and in the end irrevocable consequences. I stopped playing music seriously sometime in my late 30s - not because I decided, well this is going nowhere and it's time to get a real job but because the band I was in ground to a halt and no one else asked me to do anything. And then it was years later and hey, I was an ex-muso....I did an MA and then a PhD without really thinking about an academic career, but then, as a consequence, obvious to anyone but me, that's where I ended up - teaching, inevitably, in a much worse university that the ones I studied at. I gave up drinking abotu the same time, and smoking, just after my mother died - in retrospect, it all looks life changing, but at the time, after a year of looking after her, and other shit, it was just a temporary thing - but I haven't drunk alcohol or taken drugs in 15 years.I've just made, for thre first time ever it feels like, a definite, life changing and quite possibly foolish decision, in full knowledge of the consequences - maybe the first adult decision ever. At 57.
― Fine Toothcomb (sonofstan), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:09 (six years ago) link
My only real dream was to not depend on or have to listen to my parents.― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:03 (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinkexactly!! my parents or anyone.― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:05 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:03 (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:05 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Sometimes I feel like this particular dream probably turned out to be the hardest to fully realize.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:13 (six years ago) link
when i was a teen my only dream was to live away from where i grew up
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, October 14, 2017 5:46 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
mine too. I didn't know what a person could do, back then. I had to learn a lot before I could have dreams.
― droit au butt (Euler), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:13 (six years ago) link
william - that's rough. i was lucky enough to when the time came to gtfo from indiana my spouse was supportive (even though i expressed the need in the most emotionally immature and bullying way possible). bad as things are for me now i feel the most for the people who haven't been able to gtfo like i was.
― bob lefse (rushomancy), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:20 (six years ago) link
I guess my earlier dreams have now been dissolved in a warm, general sense of fulfillment, which is very nice in its own way, but does tend to lessen one's sense of having large life goals still left to achieve. I suppose this is not a horrible thing once one surpasses 60. I am disgustingly contented with my life.
― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:25 (six years ago) link
I had to learn a lot before I could have dreams
Same here. My ambition age 16 was to be some place where people didn't want to instantly beat the shit out of me for being different to them. That ambition got fulfilled surprisingly quickly - I moved away to go to university - but I was left with the totally unexpected problem of what I was actually going to do after that. All of my drive and motivation had been focused on getting out of that shitty town, but once I was out there was no goal or plan, so I drifted for a long long time.
― Zings Can Only Get Better (snoball), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:39 (six years ago) link
I didn't say anything about scorn, yeah. I really don't think Democrat vs Republican maps onto those differing lifestyle ideals, tbh.Pew begs to differ...http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/overview_3-5/
― rb (soda), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:39 (six years ago) link
Ha, interesting.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:54 (six years ago) link
Closing in on 50, I feel like I'm sort of circling back toward some of those dreams/goals, but which a more grounded sense of what's possible or likely. Also an awareness of how little time there actually is to do anything at all.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 14 October 2017 17:59 (six years ago) link
my dreams were of becoming a musician and author who made things that did for a few people what the music I listened to and the books I read did for me. those dreams I have realized; it took a long time and a lot of work, and, for me anyway, the realization of those dreams is accompanied by a strong desire to make good on that realization: to do better work, to never rest or grow too comfortable in the pursuit of getting as good as I can get at what I do.
I don't know that I'd have understood, without having cleared those hurdles, that my real dreams are of making the family my children grow up in as healthy and nurturing and safe as possible. but that is where my heart is now, and it's an endless dream: to be a good father to my children, to never lose sight of how central this role is to my sense of myself. (those of you who know me will understand why being part of a healthy family is, for me, truly the stuff of dreams.) for my marriage to be what my parents' marriage was not. to set a good example. these may seem like modest dreams compared to big outsize ambitions but for me they have all the hallmarks of dreams: big mountains to climb, the allure but also the terror of the unknown, the feel of the unreal.
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Saturday, 14 October 2017 19:54 (six years ago) link
i never really had dreams. i always just wanted to make it day to day. make enough money to live. i was on my own when i was 19 with no money and i just took it from there. get a job. have enough to live on. right now i have more than i ever thought i'd have. i have MORE than enough. even though i still don't have a lot of money. i have plenty of food to eat! when i was writing a lot i did think about writing a book someday. that was the only future thing i think i've ever thought about or allowed myself to think about. i don't write anymore though. i just work as hard as i can on my store. and hang out with my kids and maria. and watch a lot of t.v. and read sci-fi.
― scott seward, Saturday, 14 October 2017 20:07 (six years ago) link
I've been thinking about this and feel like sharing a little more. I'm 32 now. The only time in my life when I felt intrinsically motivated towards a career was in university and grad school when I was hoping to go into academia. For a bunch of reasons (depression, inability to complete work, feeling overwhelmed and lacking guidance), I lost that motivation, and I haven’t found anything to replace it. I'm living with my father now and only working part-time either with him or through connections of his, and I feel constantly bad about it. I have a lot of trouble thinking about jobs and long-term plans. My brain seizes up and I can't stop crying whenever I talk about it, with family or therapists or whoever. My main desire right now is to move out, which for me is a mentally hard prospect.
At the same time, I look back on who I was a few years ago and I see someone much more narrowly focused, insecure, and thoughtless. I feel like I've grown since losing that academic goal, and I don't feel like going back is the solution. What motivates me these days is learning new things and finding art and music, and when doing that I'm totally happy. I don't think I need very much just to be content, but finding a life that feels like my own is still a problem.
― jmm, Saturday, 14 October 2017 20:14 (six years ago) link
i don't quite know how to answer this question because i feel like it's not formulated for my situation but an honest answer would mean turning it around properly in a way i am reluctant to tangle with at the moment.
essentially i have not (just shy of 40) given up my dreams which more or less resemble the ones i have had since i was a teenager; but i should have realized them more by now and the gradual dissipation/emptying out of them in light of the extent to which i have arguably so far realized them seems to kind of be making me wish i could give up on them. but if i gave up on them i would not have anything, so i can't do that.
a couple years ago i read a story, in the newspaper, about a homeless-transitioning accommodation in town, the kind of place that tries to set people up in assisted living, stabilizes them, etc. with the hopes of working steadily and gradually becoming independent again. one guy had worked as a dishwasher, liked it fine, was doing okay, but a car accident left him with chronic pain and then pain management and addiction problems that hampered his ability to work and then left him intermittently employed, homeless, in and out of stability, for ten years, before this point when he was just about ready to get a place of his own. i was struck by this because it was about how long my post-grad school period of fluctuating unemployment and underemployment and unhappiness had about stretched, and that seemed to nullify any differences between me and the guy. my feeling was: yes, people think it's some big thing, an exception, to have your life fall apart, but they can glide along so easily in theirs that they can't appreciate how a person could be stuck for ten years, that the impossibility of changing your life could become so terribly permanent, for essentially no different reason, just being borne along by life.
i persist in my dreams for myself but also, it seems, just to be able to prove to others, to someone else, that i'm not nothing. that those years weren't nothing.
― j., Saturday, 14 October 2017 21:03 (six years ago) link
My only real dream was to not depend on or have to listen to my parents.― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:03 (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalinkexactly!! my parents or anyone.― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:05 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkSometimes I feel like this particular dream probably turned out to be the hardest to fully realize.― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, October 14, 2017 1:13 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, October 14, 2017 1:13 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yes and i totally relate. lol. we are genetically tied to our parents, we ARE our parents.
it is the inescapable lottery of life. everyone has their own inhereted business to deal with, their own genetic history, the socio-biological circumstances they didn't ask for.
when we are young we have these fixations, we are just getting used to the world, to the social and physical realm. often we are programmed to attach to certain symbols or systems in response to the symbolic language of capitalism. there are society-imposed goals like getting married, starting a family, or owning a house. Social Dreams? like being rich or being famous as an end goal, it seems like a dead end, something naive and simplistic, not really providing any peace but attracting all number of Psychic Vampires and power hungry creeps. imo material wealth past the point of necessity is an illusion and a trap to the addictive personality (which could be anyone, again, lottery of birth)
imo it is best to think of life as a waking dream, a web always spinning itself. this is certainly true, we play many roles over the course of our lives, our consciousness is ever-changing, physiology and biology adapting to our ever-changing environments. friend and family die, scenes fade out, people move away, our experience of the world is ever-shifting, slices of continuity, events that we experience through our senses and reflect upon later. in this way life is like a dream, in which we also see, feel, hear. we are of the universe and the universe was set in motion before we came to be. thus we are caught up in the trajectory of things, the motion that pulls us along. this is the dream of the universe itself.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 15 October 2017 02:26 (six years ago) link
We are not our parents
― Gary Synaesthesia (darraghmac), Sunday, 15 October 2017 02:30 (six years ago) link
i'm not anybody's parents, thank christ
― bob lefse (rushomancy), Sunday, 15 October 2017 02:42 (six years ago) link
My dreams were a lot of things ... in high school it was bizarre experimental filmmaker, bizarre experimental musician, bizarre experimental comedian... those dreams I can probably do whenever since there'll never be much of an audience for that stuff. Door's always open, I guess.
In middle school, I was a utopian idealistic, and I wanted to be a revolutionary who brought empathy and compassion society... to create a perfectly engineered world based on systems theory and secular humanism. Having had brushes with power, that's not a dream I'd really like to pursue for my own well-being, I've faced enough bullshit in my life. I can always volunteer, become a mentor, do pro bono work for deserving clients. So in a way that door is still open, too...
Another dream was to create my own little business empire. I'm currently working for a brilliant entrepreneur and quickly rising through the ranks, and he's taken me under his wing, and I'm learning some good shit, so perhaps I can still do that if/when I decide to go out on my own...
I'm 34 now. My greatest dream was to have a loving family, but I'm such a mutant and fuck up that I'm not sure that'll ever be possible.
― carpet_kaiser, Sunday, 15 October 2017 03:06 (six years ago) link
You could always pursue the dream of creating bizarre experimental Facebook macros and having them go viral.
― A is for (Aimless), Sunday, 15 October 2017 03:57 (six years ago) link
(long; skip if you choose)
So almost exactly 34 years ago — i.e. sometime in late 1983 — I got my first piece published in NME (a live review of One the Juggler at the Marquee lol) (they were bad not good). And a few weeks back, I had a nudge on facebook that K was leaving NME, after 34 years on the admin staff, and her leaving party is at ____ on ____. K, a kind, lovely woman who everyone adored and continues to adore, is certainly the last left of those on staff when I was beginning, which means she’d survived through every change and tribulation, every editor good and bad since the early 80s. So of course I went along — we hadn’t been entirely out of touch, courtesy Facebook, and it seemed important to go along and be part of the celebratory throng.
From my mid-teens in the 70s, all I’d wanted in life was to write for the NME. Its writers had inspired me, its mischief had shaped me: its goals — as I interpreted them — were my goals. So I had been thrilled to have been taken on, provisionally, as a freelancer. I’d completed my time at university with more than half a mind on ending up here (my degree, maths and philosophy, couldn’t have been less relevant). This was my dream, and — honestly — all of my dream. I’ll say more about the goals another time — but what followed, at this realisation of my intense one-and-only teenage dream, was (of course) five years of bafflement, frustration and upset, which really only a kind of boneheaded stubbornness got me through. First, I couldn’t seem to get purchase in this world, to master what it took to be admired or fast-tracked by editors, to be assigned the kind of work I wanted. Second, which is related but subtly different, I couldn’t see the link between the world I encountered in the office, and what came out the other end — the rivalries and feuds and pettiness in what you might call the outer chambers could be alchemised into something that still, somehow (though less and less as time went on), aligned with my still-undescribed goals. Third, I couldn’t see what might be good in my writing as distinct from everything that still wasn’t: and I hugely resented people whose writing I didn’t think much of getting much more work than me (which in retrospect they probably deserved — some of them). Even more I resented editors not seeing past my manifold surface flaws and tongue-tied self-presentation to recognise the genius that had certainly not at that time in any sense flowered.
But I should straight away note that I made several friends who are still friends, and met people who never quite became friends that I retain very fond memories of: some people who in the local caffs could tell a story that made you laugh until your face hurt (but never seemed to choose to transfer this into their prose), and others who were funny off and on the page. Also people who were sly, people who were impossible, people who were idiots — and people like K, who are just lovely. And I filled myself into the faction — bcz so faction, very feud, ugh — that went off to run The Wire, where eventually I would become editor and change the world that way *sigh*
By no means all the factions were represented at K’s party: I was the only Wire-type person really. The shock of it — jumping back 30 years, which can change people a lot, their looks and their memories — threw me back not even to my 1988 self, when I stalked out of the paper on a point of semi-confected principle (story elsewhere: it relates to U2), but almost to my timid 1983 self. I don’t think of myself as courageous or driven but back in the early 80s I really did shoulder past a lot of strong hints that I didn’t belong and wasn’t much good (I wasn’t much good; I got much better). True, I wasn’t afraid of anyone anymore — I’ve been an editor myself, I’ve watched other careers rise and stall, I strongly feel I’m at my best and happiest and most fulfilled right now, really… which I suspect isn’t the tale some of my former on-it faster-track foes are telling themselves. Though to be fair most people there seemed content enough — and some of them also seemed very very old.
My dream as a small kid was that I wanted to be a writer. We had a family friend who was an author and translator and her (big tall) Shrewsbury townhouse was jampacked with books, floor to ceiling, every floor of I think five! I love the look and feel of this, and her frown and focus as she typed, cigarette in mouth (she lived to a great age but of course died of cancer).
I did ok with some teachers writing, but quite badly with others. It wasn’t till I was a teen that I found a subject: it was to be punk rock! Or anyway, as years passed and thrill of that moment turned very complex, it was to be music as a whole. And at the age of 23 I found I’d arrived through the door of being allowed to do this, somewhat conditionally: except what I found inside was exactly not my kind of social space, London media-club writ small despite its countercultural origins, and (with excellent moments and a few achievements I’m still pleased with) I underwent something like a decade of mild trauma that I mostly refused to face and entirely refused to vocalise. Culminating when I lost my job as Wire editor through a combo of creative exhaustion and being (temporarily) out of step with the plans of the then-owners (who went in quite another direction shortly after they’d fired me, allowing my successors to buy them out and steer it wherever they chose (including into profit).
Today I think all this did me more good than bad — because it forced me from my mid-30s on to spend a *LOT* of time bruisedly taking stock of what I wanted to do and what I was no longer prepared to do. But for several years I just retreated into a shell and did little more than spend time with my ill and ageing parents and correct other people’s spelling. In many ways early ilx is what brought me back to myself: in a weird way it was what university should have been — sitting up late talking garbage about trash with likeminded ppl from many different kinds of background, many of whom I remain excellent friends with on and off the boards — and realising there were written approaches I was unexpectedly good at that I wasn’t really using professional, which the internet very much valorised (if not to the extent of paying for them, obviously).
So the cumulative crash of my teenage dreams really did eventually allow me to live in a small flat full of books floor-to-ceiling, typing away most days. No cigarette though: I plan to outlive her.
― mark s, Sunday, 15 October 2017 11:56 (six years ago) link
*applause*
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 15 October 2017 12:35 (six years ago) link
honestly if book-length autibiographies were this good or this honest i might read a couple
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 15 October 2017 12:36 (six years ago) link
weird thing is I've used my 30s to achieve some of the dreams I let slip by in my 20s.
feel like at times I'm in a mad dash to accomplish a lot before 40 and that I'm in a pre-midlife crisis atm.
also have started to erode away my 'corporate' persona and give my antiseptic business colleagues a taste of who I really am for the first time in pretty much 13 years. Years after I "sold out".
do I respect myself? some days. some not.
at least I can afford to drink when I don't!
― fuck you, your hat is horrible (Neanderthal), Sunday, 15 October 2017 12:51 (six years ago) link
I feel three chess moves away from quitting my well-paying job to like, be a roadie for a third-tier black metal band and live out of a van on the road.
― fuck you, your hat is horrible (Neanderthal), Sunday, 15 October 2017 12:52 (six years ago) link
recently, my only dream was to get through that long-ass mark s. post and i did it! i read the whole thing! i can die happy now.
totally stealing this too:
"sitting up late talking garbage about trash"
― scott seward, Sunday, 15 October 2017 17:24 (six years ago) link
I’ve managed to downsize my dream of making a graphic novel to an epic, award-winning, children’s book. Being a creative-dreamer-type person, I can’t ever not dream. I haven’t started my damn book yet but my new job has lull hours. Once I buy a laptop and I’ll be ready to start!
I get inspiration from ‘American Splendor’ - a movie about underground cartoonist, Harvey Pekar. I like how he got his start while he was working some stupid office job. I like how he met his dorky, artsy girlfriend (and wife) just after gaining little bit of fame. These things help me keep on dreaming big.
― Woon... Doopee Time (FlopsyDuck), Tuesday, 17 October 2017 00:26 (six years ago) link
dreaming was always the objective. I realised early that it was the best part, that no reality could match the exhilaration of your brain speeding through ideas to draw a scene for you. I learned to quickly let go of each dream so it wouldn't get in the way of the next. my friends complained I had all these great ideas I never followed through, but they always loved to hear the next one, even long after they gave up trying to make me realise them. once the internet arrived, that sealed the deal
― ogmor, Tuesday, 17 October 2017 02:30 (six years ago) link
after years of toil I have realised my dream to be unemployed and crippled by negative thinking in the so-called prime of my life
― ogmor, Tuesday, 17 October 2017 02:33 (six years ago) link
all my dreams were negative. i dreamt of not going to school & church, not having to see relatives or make small talk, not living in the suburbs, not having to leave my room, not having to be frugal, not having to listen, not having to be seen. got my wishes. but no time to stop dreaming
― ogmor, Tuesday, 17 October 2017 02:37 (six years ago) link
i wanted to be a spy when i was 9-11 or so but then stopped thinking about it, although i do think i'd have been good at it
― ogmor, Tuesday, 17 October 2017 02:40 (six years ago) link
This is an interesting question.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a famous actor/musician. I kept this dream going in my head right up until high school, when I looked at the entertainment industry and what I could bring to it as a barely-trained bass-baritone uninterested in a career as a classical soloist and thought "I am never going to be anyone's lead singer and I can't really play an instrument and I've never really studied acting; how am I going to get into this insanely competitive field and succeed enough to make a living?" This was also right as software was becoming the Hot New Industry and just before the internet took off and created a new job market. I decided to keep my performance dreams as a hobby and go after software as a career as it would give me enough money and vacation time to pursue my artistic interests under much lower pressure, since I wouldn't need to perform to support myself. As luck would have it, I ended up joining some amazing groups that led to paid work on the opera stage, scratching both the singing and acting itch, and collaboration in the indie rock world that got me credits on two albums that debuted in the Billboard Top 100. I also got to travel abroad on five different choir trips, sang for several years with the BSO and the Boston Pops (including a bunch of televised holiday performances where the camera literally sat in my lap and I got a ton of screen time), and have been singing in a professional church choir for the past 15 years. I'm not world-famous and I'm not insanely wealthy but I am very, very happy. My only regret is not realizing much earlier in life that my voice was actually decent raw material and spending money on shaping it; I don't know that I would be famous if I'd done regular, serious voice study as opposed to sporadic bursts but I probably wouldn't have hobbled my vocal range and could conceivably had tried to do more solo musical theater/classical things as opposed to thinking I could only be an ensemble member. (Don't get me wrong; I love being in ensembles. As I've gotten older and gotten more opportunity to work on solo rep, and gotten massively positive feedback on solos I've done from an admittedly friendly audience, I have definitely wondered what I would sound like or be doing had I gotten more serious earlier, or studied with some of the bigger voice teachers around town. At a minimum, I'd probably be a much bigger asset to my current ensembles.)
― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP), Tuesday, 17 October 2017 14:23 (six years ago) link