Someone recently told me: “I want what you have, I want what you got! You get to travel for work, you have two beautiful girls, you have it all. You’re alive, you’re living it!”
I had to tell them, “Be Careful what you Wish for.”
Sure, it all looks like roses. It smells like roses. But it didn’t come from roses.
We all go through our different paths. We all pay our separate dues. We might even end up in the same place, but we went through different paths to get there.
Sure you can get a job where you get to travel the world, but I put in 15 years of retail experience, working for some hellish conglomerate big companies that lied to you from day one, and would rip out your soul if it meant that you could turn a positive profit for their shareholders. I even went through the roughest year of my life career-wise, doubting if I even ever wanted to be in retail anymore.
Sure you can have two children, maybe even two daughters. Be prepared to not sleep in EVER. Never. Never again. Not even when you’re on vacation. Be prepared to not enter a movie theater for 3.5 years. Be prepared to lose parts of your memory not because you’re getting old, but because the lack of sleep has forced your brain to cope and prioritize your life, and some memories get discarded as a result.
Sure you can feel alive, and make trips and plans on a whim. But when you lose the two most influential forces you would ever know in your life (both within the same year), you too would realize that your bucket list needs to be emptied a little here and there.
I’m forever blessed that I have the right folks around me who know that my dues have been paid. Very few know the whole whole story behind it all, and even fewer still get to share in the good times that are being had these days as a result. Sure there are times that I’m just waiting for a shoe to drop and have to deal with karma all over again. It’s ok though, I’ll be waiting for it to strike.
Song of the Day: A Wake – Macklemore ft Ryan Lewis, Evan Roman
