Dreams

It’s been a week since the last day of my 5 day vacation. We spent 4 of the last 5 days visiting friends in Tennessee. Though we were only gone a short time, it was a fun, relaxing trip. But my wife put it more accurately. It was inspiring. It sounds like a strange way to describe a vacation? I mean, you don’t usually go away for a few days and say a vacation was inspiring, but this one truly was.

I think part of it was we escaped our bubble, our comfort zone, for a few days and saw how life outside of it can be. When you can’t rely on daily habits and routine, things are fresh, exciting and yes, inspiring.

Our friends were probably the most inspiring part of the trip. It was refreshing to be around dreamers. Dreamers in the sense that they know what they hope to be and have, and then do what they can to go after the dreams.

I was that guy for awhile, but life got in the way. I’m not saying my wife and boys got in the way. Not at all. If anything, they helped keep the dream somewhat alive in me.

But often as adults, dreams give way to reality. And the reality is paying bills, maintaining homes and cars, trying to fit things into a chaotic schedule. It becomes a grind. Wake up at 6, hit snooze, roll over for 10 minutes, maybe hit snooze again. Then shuffle to the shower, get dressed, brush your teeth, grab breakfast in a package and hit the road for our 30 minute commute to the office.

We’re already buried in work by the time we get there. Yet by the end of the day we buried even further.

Yes, the American dream.

Somehow it’s supposed to be expected these days. With high unemployment rates, we are blessed to have jobs when we have them. People work knowing that if they complain, they run the risk of losing their job. They can’t walk away because they’ll be out in the street with the other nearly 10% of Americans.

Vacations as Americans aren’t vacations nearly as much as they used to be either. The wonders of today’s technology make each person a mobile office. All you need is a phone or blackberry and a laptop. I tried my hardest this past vacation to unplug as best as I could. I did a fair job, but in the back of my mind I knew the workload when I returned would be huge.

I tend to internalize as not to be a complainer. I keep it all in so I don't burden anyone else. I’ll work through meals to get things done. I’ll work late and cut out sleep to catch up. Then I’ll lay awake at night thinking about the first thing I need to get done the next morning. Well, that causes someone prone to stress induced migraines to have a nice spike in frequency of the headaches.

And it’s been brutal. Even my trips to the chiropractor haven’t helped as much as they did 6 months to a year ago. There was a stretch in the spring of 2009 where I went migraine free for a month. These days, I’m lucky if I only have 1 a week.

I’ve had CAT scans and MRI’s. Everything comes back normal. Doctors have prescribed muscle relaxers and beta blockers to reduce the frequency. Doctors have suggested Topomax for prevention, which seems to work in many patients. But the side effects are just as scary as the migraines.

I’ve been a diagnosed migraine sufferer for over 10 years now, but I can remember back to having bad headaches in my teens. So I’ve probably had them all my life. I often wonder if I have post concussion syndrome from times where I cracked my head on the road, or fell off a porch, or did something stupid to my cranium.

But I digressed for this reason, maybe if I was living my dream, and out of the rat race, I’d have fewer headaches.

It’s called a rat race because it’s a trap. You go through the maze in front of you, in search of the cheese. But it’s a trap. You search and search, but all you end up getting is a piece of cheese. In actuality, we want freedom and to find a way out. The dream is to be free.

I dream of a day when I’m not a robot, when I’m not a servant to the system. In that dream, I’m not 65 either. In my dream, I’m still a young man and the world is my oyster. In my dream, maybe I’m an author or I have a role where I help and encourage people.

In my dream, I can wake up and decide what I want to do that day. Maybe I go to my home office and write some more. Maybe I take the family on a daytrip on a whim. Maybe I drive the boys to school and let my wife sleep in. In my dream, I take a few days off to truly unwind, rest, relax and recharge.

In my dream, I’m living my dream.

It’s just hard to dream that dream when you don’t have time to sleep.