Chasing Your Dreams
Nov 4th, 2008 by Carlos
I was reading this post the other day and when I got to the part about chasing your dreams, I jotted down a quick note to myself: “do this for my dreams, writing.”
Here is the paragraph I’m talking about:
Look at your dreams. Where do you want to be in five years? In ten years? Take that dream and flesh it out in as much detail as you can. What would you really like to be doing? Now, every day, ask yourself what you’re doing to move yourself in that direction. You’ll often find that keeping your eye on the ball helps keep you from getting distracted by unnecessary spending.
And now that I’m looking it over I realize that my little note I took doesn’t seem to realize what a huge undertaking a post like this would be. The idea is to take a look at where you want to be, what that entails financially and otherwise, and then set up some goals that will get you there.
So I want to be a writer. I would like to be able to focus on that 100% instead of having to try to do it as a side project. I started to think about everything that would mean, goal-wise, and my head started to spin. Some considerations: I would need to replace my salary, still contribute towards my retirement, prepare for the purchase of a house, prepare for eventually having children, start saving for the children’s college tuition, and still have enough money coming in to maintain my current lifestyle. Oh and I like to travel too.
And this is before I start to set goals about the actual project it would all be about: the writing. My head hurt already. I can understand why people don’t set budgets or just want to ignore their financial situations: it’s kind of depressing and overwhelming when you think about it too much.
But it’s not as bad as it seems once you get into the real nitty gritty of it. Talking in generalities is tough and can turn a lot of people off, but specifics can shed some light on things like this. Take my own example on wanting to devote myself to writing—the obvious issue is about money.
Specifically, what would I have to do to get started towards my goal? I would have to drastically increase my earnings (and perhaps trim my spending…more), save whatever increase I do get, and start a side business that could eventually replace my income.
Is it easy? No. Can I do it? I think so. Just the simple fact of listing it out and seeing it on the screen shows me that it’s not as overwhelming as it feels when you’re talking about generalities.
My recommendation? Write it down. Whether you do it or not, at least exploring the possibilities of chasing your dreams puts it into a more real-world context. You’ll know roughly what you have to do, the amount of work it will take, and how likely it is that you’ll do it.
If you don’t, you won’t even get that far.
