LJ Idol, Season 3, Post 3 - Dare to Dream

[msmoon]

2/9/2007 EDIT: 

Vote for me!

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LJ Topic: “My Biggest Mistake and What I Hope that I Have Learned From it"

Hmm. What a loaded topic. How do you approach something like that?...and more importantly, what is my biggest mistake? I’ve never been the type to rehash problems or mistakes. You make mistakes, you learn from it and you move on letting the wound heal in due time; a good motto really considering I’m the obsessive type that’d just as soon beat my own self down before anybody else. Not only that but my memory isn’t worth ash, so even when I do make mistakes, I tend to forget not long after. Then there’s the fact that my life is over-all mundane and what mistakes I do make don’t really impact the dullness of it.

So...should I talk about my horse Rocky, and how I agreed to sell him because my bouts with the endometriosis were making it impossible to ride him and give him the proper attention he needed? No. That wasn’t really a mistake. He went on to greener pastures, even if I couldn’t ride. Perhaps I should talk about believing the local doctors for over three years when they said it was all in my head, then seeing a specialist and finding out my condition was actually worsening...no. Too self-righteous. I think I’m beginning to see why this topic is one that I find hard to write on...my mistakes are not mistakes, only difficult lessons. It felt terrible to sell Rocky after growing attached to him and loving him for so long, but it was the right thing to do. He was wasting away in a pasture, doing nothing but being fed and eating grass all day long. The same with my doctors. They’re doctors, they should be smart enough to know when something’s wrong, no? But they let me down by closing their minds and assuming that if they could not find something, there must be nothing wrong. I learned to listen to myself, to trust myself and to pay more attention to who I’m confiding my trust to.

But I don’t want it to seem as though I’m trying to cop out of the subject. So I’ll write about mistakes and what I’ve learned. But haven’t I already? Is this enough, typing out that these were mistakes and that I don’t view them as such?…I’ll throw in one more, just to be certain.

When I graduated from High School, I debated for a while as to what I should go to college for. I had to go to college; my brother didn’t and my parents have ragged on it every sense. Not going to college would disappoint them and make them feel as though they’d failed at raising two children. But like many young people, I had no idea what it was that I should be going for. Should I pursue something that would flourish my writing and allow me to better write my book? …No, that would be entirely too risky. What if I didn’t get anywhere with it and ended up wasting the money? OK. Web design. I’ve always enjoyed graphic and web design, and I’ve never had a degree for it so that I could do it professionally. Certainly that would be something worthwhile. No...risky again and besides that, Nichols (the closest official college) is a very expensive school. I don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for something like that, a field that I may never succeed in. So, I investigated the local community college. Their equipment wasn’t as good, and they didn’t have quite as many options, but still! I could study Office Systems and Accounting, earn some sort of Business Degree and then I’d at least have a fall-back. Something that I could always use…but certainly something I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life. 2+ years later, I earned my Associates Degree in Office Systems Technology...I’ve been working at this little desk job, a job my degree provided for me. And all the time I keep saying “If I could go back to school for something like writing or web design, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Perhaps having this degree under my belt was a good idea. Perhaps it will help me in the future…but the time it took to get it could’ve been used to further my dreams. I should’ve trusted myself or at least been willing to take the risks. But I didn’t want to burden my parents should the financial situation get out of hand, and I was too afraid to fail them (and myself). Failure is a part of life. Everyone does it (and I can say that without feeling cliché). And we all deal with it and walk away with something more. Sure, you may have failed, but you still have something more than what you came with. I learned something else while at this desk job, filing, copying, taking phone calls, and organizing mail...yes. I can be content with this. It’s something I can do and that I do well...But it isn’t fulfilling. It doesn’t pressure me, it doesn’t challenge me, and it doesn’t satisfy me. In its own way, it smothers me. I can’t write because all of my efforts are devoted to this job. I’m tired at the end of the day, and I’m not strengthening the very skills that make me me. Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned from this…is not to be afraid. I’m going to fail at some things. It’s inevitable. But I shouldn’t be afraid of that, or if I am, I shouldn’t let that paralyze me.

In the future (once I’ve accomplished many other goals), I hope to be able to go back to college for the things I love to do. Maybe I will fail at them...but if I do, at least I can say that I dared to dream.