Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Problems With Dreams

I hope everyone had a wonderful and happy Memorial Day weekend.  I had an opportunity to just sit and take stock of my life.  I had an opportunity to look back to try to figure out whatever happened to my dreams.  Those aspirations that we've all had.  Many of those we came to realize were just child's dreams and were discarded, never to be thought of again.  Others are ones that linger, that stay in our minds, dreams that we still long for but are quickly coming to the realization that, for whatever reason, we will never be able to attain.  Unfortunately, that is my life...dreams never attained, never will be.  Why?  Because all of my dreams have always been usurped by others.  Everyone in my life has embraced my dreams, have lauded them as to their greatness, etc.  But what has come of those dreams of mine?  They've been taken over by others. 
Who are these others?  How about an ex-spouse who took my dream and instead of supporting it and making every effort to help me work on my dream, decided to show me how much better they were with my dream then I was.  The results?  Totally screwed and the dream trashed.
How about partners in another venture that decided that "wishful thinking" replaced actually doing something to promote ones dream.  Unfortunately, my version of the dream didn't match with theirs.  I wanted to build an actual business...they wanted to have a "social club" and people to boss around.  The results of this dream?  The other partners didn't feel there was enough revenue being generated, so they voted to dissolve the partnership.  Another dream in the trash.
What about the latest one?  It's the same theme...I want to own and run my own business.  But now I have a spouse who has wrapped themselves with my dream, told me to keep working and investing in the business, and THEY'LL build the business (with MY money) so that at some point in my life I can quit my job and jump right into the "thriving" business.  It hasn't worked out that way.  After waiting almost 10 years, all my spouse has been able to do is spend my money, have nothing to show for it, sits around the house, eats snacks, and complains how bad the business market is.  I get an attitude when I ask how they know when the market will become better if they aren't working the business?  My spouse gets in my face and tells me not to tell them how to run a business...they know what they are doing.  I'm not a genius, but I haven't figured out yet how sitting around the house, watching TV, and eating snacks promotes any business.  Well,  they could be putting out ads on the Internet.  I've never seen any and the only ones that I am aware of are those that I have put out on the Net.  All of the customers that we have had have been driven by my ads.  And with those customers, my spouse has "rules" of which customers they will deal with and which ones they won't.  Are you a customer who will buy RIGHT NOW?  Are you going to spend a lot of money?  If yes, then my spouse will deal with you.  Otherwise, they won't spend any time with you. 
I am watching another dream ready to go down in flames and I am powerless to change that fact.  I am stuck in a dead end job, working with dead end people, trying to survive in a dead end life.
I look back at my dreams and try to figure how I failed in them, what lessons are to be learned from those failures.  I come to the conclusion that I can't put my finger on my failures, not because I am that perfect, but because I have never been given the opportunity to actually try to make my dreams work.  It's always someone else taking over those dreams, telling me that THEY are the "experts" and for me to keep working my job so that they are free to work my dream and are not inconvenienced in any way.
But can I change things?  Not at this time.  Oh, I can if I choose to completely demolish my life (which probably isn't a bad idea).  I just feel too old and tired to start from scratch...again.  And for it to work I have to NOT allow anyone else into my life.  Otherwise, it won't work...because they'll take over my dreams for their own purposes.
 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well crap. That really sucks. I hope you get things figured out. I know it's not easy, but don't give up. Never never never never never. No matter what.

Unknown said...

Wow. That's terrible. It's always tough when a significant other is also your business partner. My husband and I are like that, and we've hit a couple of roadblocks. We had bought a business (BTW - BizTrader.com is a terrific place to buy or sell a business on the Internet. Highly recommend.), and we had conflicting ideas of how we wanted to change the business. Just keep at it, and don't give up!