Birthday celebrations: I’m 37 and living my dream life

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I’m 37 and living my dream life

Pinch me.

Go on.

I know, it’s so bloody cliché, but I always wanted to be the person that one day truly thought they were living their dreams and had to be proven by a good old nail piercing incision that it was for real.

I thought dream lives were for… well for no one really. I thought every person spent their days dreaming of ideal lives, but no one actually lived them.

I thought the reality was go to work, get money, pay bills, have fun on weekends, buy house, have kids, smile in beautiful family portraits, watch kids get old, retire on well-grown super funds, go fishing and maybe start enjoying life for the last 20 years of it.

Sounded like fun in bits and pieces, but never really all that fulfilling. Never anything that would have me at my death bed giving a hell yeah high-five to say that life totally rocked and I’m pretty sad to leave it.

What society makes you believe when you grow up is total bullshit. The truth is, if you dream it you can live it, no matter what your dream is or how impossible others, or yourself, will say it is.

It could be the white picket fence and fishing retirement or the super fund, or it could be touring the world in a rock band, painting your soul’s expression every Tuesday or spending the days travelling the world with your family.

It’s your dream, it’s your right to live it.

All I ever wanted to do was travel, travel, travel.

I spent years lost because I thought I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I was a flake because I couldn’t hold down a job for more than two years.

Not couldn’t, just DIDN’T WANT to.

My spirit hated it. It felt so trapped and uncomfortable, so against its desire to roam free and laugh loudly. Any job I had was just to bring the money in and it sucked me dry every day I went to it.

I thought working sucked. I thought I was no good at it. I thought being a nomadic bum was so much better.

But I did not know how the hell was I ever going live a life where I just travelled?

Write for Lonely planet? Yeah me and a million other people. Truth was most of them wrote far better than me.

Photograph for Nat Geo? Yeah who hasn’t had that dream?

The pits.

My dream remained a dream.

Society bullshits you.

It doesn’t tell you that if you dream it it means the Universe has every intention of you living it. You don’t feel the passion and intensity keeping you awake at night pining for it otherwise.

Too many of us lie in slumber because we believe our dreams are dead in fairy land. When they are dead, what else do we have?

So we succumb to going through the motions and just getting by.

What is that about?

Just getting by?

Bullshit again.

We weren’t born to just get by. We weren’t born with those qualities.

Just getting by is not what life is about. It’s about living life out loud.

We only get one life, why should we be living it on just getting by, paying the bills and living a life less ordinary that does not make our soul sing?

I beat the retirement clock. I got to the dream before it died with the super cash out.

It was no picnic to get here and it’s still not a picnic from here on end. With it comes complete insecurity, little netting, and really not a great deal of money.

If we fall, we’ll fall hard.

But I don’t believe we will.

I’d rather take the chance. I’d rather take the living. I’d rather take the dream over the fancy cars, expensive homes, and big pay checks.

I wish-washed my way through life believing I had no talents, no spirit, no desire for hard work, yet through this process, I’ve discovered I love work and when I have a passion I throw everything into it.

I bet you would too.

Today it is my birthday. For the first time in my 37 years on earth, I really celebrate.

I celebrate living life.

I celebrate the trials.

I celebrate the failures.

I celebrate the heartache it took to get here.

I celebrate the joy.

I celebrate people.

I celebrate the dream.

Somebody pinch me. I’m 37 and living my dream.

The dream that society told me was ridiculous and unattainable. The dream that I told myself was far-out fairy land.

Let me tell you a little secret.

When you spend your days doing what you truly love, what you really, really want to do, every day is beautiful.

Like I mean really beautiful.

The challenges don’t go away, in fact they come harder and faster, but you can handle them.

In fact you relish them.

You wake every morning and instead of saying Oh fuck, you say “Thank you Thank you Thank you.” You bound out of bed ready for the day’s joy, your smile cannot be wiped from your face, you love everything around you and the world always looks bright.

You greet everyone you meet with happiness and the utmost sincerest wish: Whatever their dream may be they too can wake up every single day feeling like this.

Believe this to be the truth.

It’s not what society plans for you, it is what your dream has in store for you.