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In the Land of Broken Dreams
brandotheninjamaster
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I was thinking, all of us had dreams and aspirations that for the most part are or will not ever be realized. I'm curious as to what your dreams were PA. These could be absurd childhood dreams like mine: I wanted claws like Wolverine and to fly. Or they could be professional aspirations that were never realized. I would also like to know what stopped you from making said dreams a reality. I guess I'll start off with mine:
Professional Dream: I wanted to be an astronomer. I had a really awesome astronomy teacher back in high school and it was the only class I achieved straight As in. Needless to say when the year ended I didn't want to stop there, I wanted to keep going and do this for a living. But alas I was never to realize this dream because of my terrible aptitude for math (particularly algebra). My biggest love is the way that astronomy encompasses just about all forms of science from chemistry to physics.
Childhood Dream: Like I stated above I wanted claws like Wolverine, to fly and to be a robot. Of course I don't really need to explain why these weren't realized because that would be silly.
Alright, lets post our broken dreams and all grieve together.
Professional Dream: I wanted to be an astronomer. I had a really awesome astronomy teacher back in high school and it was the only class I achieved straight As in. Needless to say when the year ended I didn't want to stop there, I wanted to keep going and do this for a living. But alas I was never to realize this dream because of my terrible aptitude for math (particularly algebra). My biggest love is the way that astronomy encompasses just about all forms of science from chemistry to physics.
Childhood Dream: Like I stated above I wanted claws like Wolverine, to fly and to be a robot. Of course I don't really need to explain why these weren't realized because that would be silly.
Alright, lets post our broken dreams and all grieve together.
brandotheninjamaster on
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I am sad to say that I am nowhere near achieving my dream of becoming a peanut-butter maker.
I think my incredible laziness when I was 15-18 stopped me achieving certain things, and I gained the dream from there of just winning the lottery. :P
My professional dreams, I wanted to be in grad school right now instead of waiting and maybe not getting in and being stuck in this government job forever. That's not really broken though, just delayed.
I, uh, didn't have any childhood dreams. At least not consistent ones. I wanted to be an architect and a construction worker and a teacher and a musician and a witch and a whole bunch of other things. It varied depending on my mood.
Yea, I kinda thought of that when after I created it. I'm listening to Social Distortion right now that may be culprit to my twisted desire of learning about broken dreams.
"News at 10, man puts gun to head whilst listening to depressing music and after learning about how human beings never achieve what they hope to
Next on FOX, Bill O'Reilly will be discussing his life achievements".
Much in common we have.
I also really wanted to be a fighter pilot. My dad was a fighter pilot, I played with his spare/old helmet, when your a kid that is the sweetest toy ever. I also built lots of space vehicles with lego, so I guess I wanted to pilot those also. My dad was friends with Chris Hadfield, so at the time becoming an astronaut didn't seem outrageous at all.
Oh god! my dreams, what happened?!
I did Marine Biology for a year at University before switching to Genomics. Trust me, Marine Biology is no where near as good as you think it is. It's mostly about marine ecosystems and very little about the actual biology of the organisms/marine mamalia.
This is the saddest thing.
I never went for it because it's too difficult a field to be successful in, and even less likely on your own projects under your control, rather than being just the latest dude to cover an X-book.
I've also always wanted to be a writer, and in my free time I still force myself to keep up with it. Currently, I'm outlining a novel I want to finish this year.
In other words, you won't get me down, absurdly depressing thread. :P
I'm 5-6. and a half.
Mom drank coffee and smoked while pregnant with me. All my siblings are around 5-9 to 6-1. Except for my oldest sister, who mom smoked and drank coffee whilst carrying. She's 5-2. Sometime between 10th and 11th grade my assistant coach tried to get around school rules regarding how early you could start recruiting and practicing for the following season by holding "open gyms."
I brought one of my streetball friends to a practice. He abused my assistant coach in the post for most of the "open gym" the assistant got really flustered, angry, and started flagrantly fouling my friend. My friend smashed his face with an elbow. A fight broke out. I was cut from the team the next year for not showing proper dedication to the goals of the team. Not having anything to do all winter, I laid on the couch and watched sitcoms with mom while eating corn dogs and frozen twinkies. Hence my nickname.
I also used to think I could break into screenwriting. Entered a bunch of contests, tried to get some agents. Nothing. I used to think it was my location, but really, it's that my scripts weren't that good. Plots were clunky, dialog sounded realistic but there was way too much of it and everything read like a self-indulgent 20-somethings attempts at being deep being filtered through Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino's filmographies. Which is what they were. I registered all of them with the WGA. Pulled out what I thought of as the most solid all-around script about a month ago. Lifetime movie at BEST.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
Apparently this hasn't worked out.
Wow. Now thats depressing
So, I guess my psych degree is kinda maybe close to that. Its a SOCIAL science. I can still wear a lab coat if I want.
My more recent dream has been (shockingly enough) to work with video games somehow. Doubt that will happen, but whatever, I can play them.
As for superpowers, I always wanted to be the Flash. Screw flying or claws. I wanted to punch a dude like 5000 times in a second.
PSN: Corbius
It's still not all that great, but looking at how I did all those previous scripts wrong is helping point me towards making these little zombie chronicles work right.
The job I do have isn't either one of those dreams, but it's close in that I'm paid to entertain people daily, so I get to make people laugh for money, and it's working out okay (i'm totally jinxing myself.) And some days I wake up, like yesterday, frustrated because the dream I just woke up from includes either being on a movie set and arguing with someone about how they're ruining my script, or I'm crossing someone over and throwing a perfect alley-oop pass to the sort of beanpole kids I used to run with, who made all-state teams effortlessly.
I can't even play basketball anymore - my hips essentially atrophied in my really fat period, and I've developed a strange little affliction where my knees try to pick up the slack my hips aren't carrying, and it causes serious, intense pain in the back of my knees that render me almost immobile after about 15 minutes of a game. I'm probably in the best physical shape of my life now, and I can't actually play the game anymore.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
Really though even with half of that I could follow every single one of my professional dreams, cause all they really take is time, money and effort. But mostly money.
To me receiving that amount of money is akin to cutting the chains off. Freedom to do absolutely anything.
In the 2 hours its been alive it only have 24 posts. Well I guess with the OP and this one its 26.
I don't mean under-achievers really, I just mean people who don't get their dreams. We need that one guy to come in and bring the feel good factor.
You know, like a fire fighter, but against water.
I'd get to carry a flamethrower.
We have 1!!!
That just sounds awesome.
Is this inspired from that Where's Waldo picture?
Cause that was my favorite.
I blame Jurassic Park.
I also have always had a strong connection to music. I wanted to be a rock star. Like Bon Jovi (hey, fuck you... I was like 8). My parents supported band instead, and I got pretty good at the trumpet. And vocals. But after high school, the dream kinda went on hold... only to resurface every now and again when I fuck with Logic on my mac.
I had no idea what I wanted to be for YEARS following that, but really liked computers.
As it stands, I do not *love* what I currently do (CTO for a firm in NYC, Co-owner of a medical software company), but I do enjoy it. I would rather go to a music conservatory and spend a couple of years really honing my craft, but I need the money to be able to do that without fear of becoming homeless or something.
So yeah... dreams die.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
This thread partners well with the "What do you do for a living thread." And so far as my basketball story goes, I actually did get to achieve my dream of entertaining people for a living. It just didn't happen in the form and fashion I thought it would, and not on the scale I was dreaming of. But it DID happen. And how it happened is a pretty good story, too.
Damn, man. Sometimes, every now and again, I'll dream about being back in high-school and I wake up frustrated as hell. For precisely those reasons. So many big fish in a little pond, all trying to shit on the guppies to feel better about themselves.
Geek: Remixed - A Decade's worth of ruined pop culture memories
Xbox Live - Fatboy PDX
Combine that with me realizing "shit, most of this is dumbly depressing", and with my increasing interest in history and nonfiction, and I slowly started wanting to become a diplomat.
I still want to do political science, but my shittyness with languages seems like it's going to keep me at a deskjob. But I dream a lot about working for the Diplomat Corp or the CIA or something, knowing that's never going to work.
Kaputa- "Oh man it would be so rad to go to MIT I know it's not super likely but god that would be cool and-"
MIT- "FUCK YOU!"
I think its fallacious to look at it from a perspective of "what did you want to be when you were young?" for a couple of reasons. One, a young person lacks the background information to make any sort of realistic decision and two, the path of a life has so many forks that you're almost never able to see from the beginning where you'll end up.
But I think there's an "optimum trajectory" for a life...a series of decision branches that will keep someone's life experience elevated to the glimmering potential felt in the early days of youth. You may not be an astronaut or President, but you still feel that your life is, to a certain extent, charmed. You feel like there remains promise and perfection in today and tomorrow.
And there are decisions or moments in a life where you can fall from that optimum trajectory. Where everything after that moment feels a little tarnished. You may be able to still describe a similar arc, but it will always be a certain amount lower than the optimum trajectory you might have once been able to travel. While you can still look forward with a certain amount of optimism, you know in your soul that today and tomorrow will never be what they might have been and all of the days you lived along your optimum trajectory are in your past.
The thoughts I'm struggling with now are whether or not it's actually possible to regain that optimum trajectory. Maybe if you notice it soon enough after that turning point, you can correct your descent. But if that turning point only reveals itself years later, after you've travelled years along that sub-optimal arc and the weight of every decision since adds momentum to be overcome, can you ever regain the optimum trajectory so present and promising in your youth?
My kiddy dream: I always wanted to be able to shoot energy blasts like in DBZ. I remember laying on my bed, Saturday mornings, and trying to shoot kamehamehas at the ceiling. I'd strain so hard that sometimes I'd pee myself.