“Dreamers just dreaming
But, we are dreamers”
-PMToday
Isn’t dreaming a wonderful thing. I’m sure we’ve all done it. Whether it’s imagining that vacation getaway or winning the lottery it’s something that has no doubt been floated at you at one time or another. And sure, anything that puts you in a happy place or an escape from the everyday monotony of life is a good thing in my book. But, it can also be bad.
There is a big difference between goals, ideas, objectives and dreams. To me a dream is something that is near fantasy. Ideas/goals/objectives are all doable. But dreams are the top of that mountain that people rarely make it to.
Over the last year, Stefanie and I have made a lot of: D. ALL OF THE ABOVE in terms of what we want out of life and where we see our future. It’s fun! To have a person that you can sit and say I have a goal to be debt free by year end or some other short term goal and you can help me reach that goal by doing this, or doing that. I have a goal to finish 7 classes by July so she can help me by encouraging me and also pestering me about it. (She’s very good at “nagging” so I’m covered on that second one.)
But we have big dreams too. To retire by the ocean. To have an RV to travel the country. To retire before we are too old to hike at all the places we travel to. Now I am not saying that any of these things are not doable but when you make poor choices with your finances and are still paying for it in your 30’s it makes it hard to accomplish those big dreams.
I’ve recently realized that a lot of the things I spent money on years ago don’t really serve a purpose for me now. I have sold almost all of my Criterion Collection Blu-Rays and DVDs. It was a huge collection and I invested a ton of time and interest into it. Movies have always been a huge part of my life and to some degree they still are, but when you never have time to watch the movies you’ve collected in the first place; it doesn’t really make sense to hold on to those things when that money could be going elsewhere. You might be saying, “so great you used that money to pay off film school loans” or something like that but you’d be wrong. Given both of our employment situations recently, a good chunk of that income has just gone to bills. I like being able to contribute to the household anyway possible but it is kind of bittersweet for me to let something go that I put so much work and heart into. I only have a few dozen left and it is weird walking by that shelf and it being empty. But I’ve been trying to let material things go as a way of showing myself and my kids that they are just that, things. They don’t take the place of family for me. I do not need a big DVD collection to be happy.
Holy nightmare, this post got off track a little bit. I think I had an idea when I started it about a point I wanted to make about goals and dreams and good and evil but whats it even matter anymore?! Ah yes, the fact is, at this point we are in a decent amount of debt with student loans, car, mortgage, etc. but we have not given up on any of our goals or DREAMS. We have a plan to get out of debt and to eventually get an RV and hopefully if all that goes okay, one day we will have a place by the beach. And hey, maybe we won’t get an RV but we end up by the beach instead… it wouldn’t be a bad dream to make come true either.