Armchair dreamer

ZEN THOUGHT

Talking to a lot of people, it seems that they don't really work their dream job. Sometimes they're making a lot of money, but usually, when asked whether or not they really want to work as hard as they're working now, their answer come up negative.

I do work hard. Sometimes too hard, ranging 12-14 hours per day. However, I do enjoy it. The money is good, but the feeling of freedom is unmatched. I like to travel and I get paid to do it! Expenses is steep, but the pay is good and I don't spend that much money at home, anyway.

So, when I ask them why they work at a job they don't enjoy, their answer is usually money. I agree that the need to eat does have an influence to the jobs they're taking. However, most of them work normal hours, by which I mean 40 hours per day.

If you think about it, business owners regularly work 12 hours per day seven days a week. That's 84 hours per week! Unless you're doing two jobs, or your boss makes you pull double shift, you have these free time.

So I ask them what their dream job is. A game designer. An artist. A writer. A teacher. A singer/song writer. Lots of idealistic jobs there. I guess not too many people dreams of job being a plumber.

So the next question is: what do these people do? Writers write, of course. Singers sing. Do you write every day? Do you sing everyday?

I was talking to somebody who fancied himself an inventor. He's pretty smart, alright. He always have these ideas in his head. Trouble is, he never took the time to write it down. I even went so far as to give him a note book and a pen. Still he didn't write his ideas down.

"You're not an inventor," I said, "you're just a dreamer CLAIMING to be an inventor. If you're really an inventor, then you'd be inventing things every day, but instead, you sit in front of TV everyday. You talk about inventing everyday, yet you don't do it! Imagine how much work would have been accomplished if instead of talking about it, you actually do it?

"Take a writer, for instance. Do you know how many writers wannabe out there? Yet all they do is talk. If all they write is one page a day, then at the end of the year, they'd have the next great American novel. How long does it take to type a page? 500 words per page. 12 words per minutes. Say 50 words per 5 minutes and you can have a page is less than one hour. Do you watch TV for more than one hour? Four hours, you say? Commercial will take 40 minutes of that. All you have to do is record the TV show. Sit and write one page, and then watch the recorded show, fast forward all the commercials. Edit the pages on weekend.

"Even if you write trash, as long as you do it everyday, no one can claim you're not a writer. You are a writer, just not a very good one. If all you do is sit in front of TV everyday, then you're not a writer, or whatever it is you claim to be. You're just another armchair dreamer, a couch potato getting fat while talking about great things."

You are what you frequently do. Stop talking, and start doing. Do it a little everyday. Do it for as little as 5-10 min at a time if that's all you can spare, but do it everyday! Do it while taking shower if you have to, but just do it. And then, you don't have to become your dreams. You're already living it.