Question for the "older" posters on ILX - at what age did you give up/redefine the crazy dreams of your youth, if in fact you did?

At what age [did you]/[do you expect to] give up on your dreams?

i wouldn't change anything - it's all been a great experience - but i will be glad to be moving towards something i really enjoy...

Excuse me for playing devil's advocate. I hope I'm not corssing the line here/

19, when i got mary pregnant. man, that was all she wrote.

where i've ended up is in a city i love with people that i love very much and with a life that is fulfilling in ways i couldn't have imagined at 20. and it's only now that i feel like i have the confidence and the ability to actually follow a career/dream that will make me happy in that dept. The other thing is that there were competing visions or dreams of how i saw my life so i sidestepped the big one and worked on some smaller ones. They turned out not to be that improtant once i had achieved them and i was left with the biggun.

if someone were to accuse me of not chasing my dream enough i guess i would have to say that you do it at your own pace, and this speed worked for me.

At the same time, I don't want to end up doing this the rest of my life, so I'm even more focused on my other goals in my free time.

God that sounds hippy shit. But it can work.

Mind you I dont think I shall ever own a house which is one wish of mine. But I wont feel jipped if it never happens.

Charm City, thy name is "Utopia".

(my home keyboard is so much stickier than my work keyboard that it's hard to adjust -- no, really!)

I think its all about refocus and regrouping, innit.

so how are we doing?

:S

I turn 27 in four months and am coming to grips with the fact that I'm long past the point of put up or shut up- if I haven't done anything by now, the odds that I ever will are vanishingly small, and I haven't even gotten started on any of the things I wanted to do with my life.

good news for me, you don't ever have to give up on dreaming of a lottery win.

i am 30 this year and still working the phones so things are looking pretty :-\

phew at least i've graduated from phones into public service.

i'm not sure how much more i ever dreamed of than 9-5, with weekends and evenings off, reasonable SO, and health.

a rotten childhood has its benefits in grounding you in reality fairly quicklytbh.

I think the key to this is to have modest dreams.

My childhood dreams were to not be under my parents' authority and not to live in Whitehall, Michigan. Woohoo!!!! I am an success.

hate myself so much

I turn 27 in four months and am coming to grips with the fact that I'm long past the point of put up or shut up- if I haven't done anything by now, the odds that I ever will are vanishingly small, and I haven't even gotten started on any of the things I wanted to do with my life.

We are exactly the same age! (August 18th)

About eighteen months ago I realised it was put up time - it's really hard now to get back into the mindset of someone of who felt they had time to play videogames or listen to music or whatever! I think an under-reported part of "follow your dreams" is 'the period of actively striving for them is really long and stressful and unpleasant'.

(Although it's nice that Laurel suggests that when you achieve them things get pleasant again)

Well I mean take them in stages for best results. Then you can be achieving a little bit at a time -- every Supreme Dictator had to conquer the world one continent at a time.

My other dream is to have a dishwasher and enough room for my 20 boxes of books, both of which I've had in the past but am lacking at this time. Oh the cruel vagaries of fate and the real estate market.

And a closet. A closet would be nice.

I didn't get that "Oh, no! I'm getting old! Help!" feeling until I was in my late thirties. I don't know if that's proof of immaturity or what it is.

Not that my childhood sucked because it totally didn't and I was very loved and provided for, but the evangelical world is a restrictive one and I think I took religious demands a lot more seriously than my peers, plus small towns in the middle of nowhere are horrible horrible places to be young and/or different.

In my youth, I truly dreamed of: 1) not having to submit to an over-authority for everything from when I could sit down and read a book, to what shirt I wore, to whether I finished my peas at dinner; 2) to be completely free of everyone I knew that I wasn't related to, and never see them again; 3) and to have a normal adult sex life unconstrained by God's will for my life and sinfulness/shame.

Suggest that if your youthful dreams are healthy and happy ones that are good for you, you can continue to enjoy and appreciate your degrees of success all the fucking time!! If they are like to be a rock star so you can Show Them, or make your first million, or publish some original scholarly work that no one else ever thought of, or be famous or whatever...I mean I can imagine those ringing slightly hollow in time.

Weirdly I only started having "crazy" dreams well in my twenties (spurred by a growing frustration/disillusionment with the realities of office life)

Today I have a round-numbered birthday. I still just paused over some adverts for overpriced FX pedals for a guitar I haven't even touched for a year. So, not yet, I guess.

I've been thinking lately it's not been the best decade cz I have very few ~achievements~ to look back on in it, but my quality of life right now is pretty decent in ways I thought it never would be. And it's weird noticing how my perspective has changed slowly on what's most important. Selling out to the teenage weirdo who thought that quietly frumpy overweight office workers were somehow THE OTHER (but didn't really have any better ideas either), but that seems pretty silly now, so who cares?

HB!

As for this thread, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa etc etc

already have given up my goal of batting clean-up for the ny yankees, after that it feels pretty easy to let go of crazy dreams

my adult life has turned out more or less how I envisioned it when I was a teenager tbh

max you are far too chilled and content for a dude your age - you have clearly found some secrets of happiness - maybe the secret is that there is no secret and one should just be happy to live in this world

i just realized that 35 is equidistant from both 20 and 50 and perhaps this is why i am a little more lol introspective about this birthday compared to others. mostly i just see decisions i've made (not having kids, mainly) coming to define me a in a way i was not exactly prepared for even though i don't regret those decisions at all.

overall i'm pretty happy, but i've always had modest dreams. i married a great person, have a job i love, can pay my bills and travel more or less where/when i want to...things are nice. surely they could be more exciting, but they could always be more exciting. best not to focus on that.

aren't we all constantly redefining our crazy dreams? i'm quite glad some of my youthful dreams never came true, others shifted, others have been achieved, i have new ones to set my sights on &c &c &c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knhE03yc7UY

still holding out hope to b the 1st non-catholic pope

im not really a chilled and content dude, louis, i just play one on the internet

i'm 31 and the future's so bright i gotta wear shades

no but really, leaving my job in two weeks to do what i've always wanted to do. it's pretty great.

you're marrying kate bush???

no, she is cooking me dinner

congrats cutty

i've never had any professional goals, and it's probably too late to learn to pitch or become a sick drummer. so i'm good w/having a job where i'm basically treated well, making enough money to eat out and buy good liquor, and spending a lot of time with someone i love.

finally started doing something with my life, or, er, had some direction at 33, and now I'm 34, and it's going well :)

though I am listening to Therion at ten past 6 on a Tuesday, and can't be bothered to sort my washing out.

about this age, right now :'(

never too late to learn an instrument but it is always too late to learn how to skateboard

v true

oh good, then it's not too late to fulfill my crazy dream of being an awesome drummer

think mb i sd this b4 but my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time - mission accomplished

just turned 37 and have done pretty much everything (i think) i've wanted to do.
only thing i want to do now is travel lots, been thinking about that lately.

I think my last dream died about ten years ago. It helps that I wouldn't want it now.

Some of the non-dream stuff that HAS occurred has been good, though.

feels like there is way too much pressure nowadays to fulfill all your dreams and ambitions in your 20s. i for one cannot wait till i'm in my 30s, when it's "too late" so i can chill and stop worrying about it eventually being "too late"

yo young cats I just want to tell you guys something - things like this?

I turn 27 in four months and am coming to grips with the fact that I'm long past the point of put up or shut up- if I haven't done anything by now, the odds that I ever will are vanishingly small

are 100% bullshit. cut it the fuck out. my life didn't even start til I was 28. there's dudes who can say the same about their early fifties. I was going to preach at greater length but for real. get the idea out of your head that there's some curve lives follow and you know where you're at on that curve. that idea is toxic. anybody who tries to talk you into buying that self-defeating anti-dream garbage is your enemy imo

xpost to the good dr. i know will tell me to get the rose-colored glasses off my face

I've lived all my dreams, although all of them on a much smaller scale than I originally imagined them

Wanted to be a puppy NOVELIST

No dude, I have no problem w/ your post. I just don't think being goal-oriented is always the productive route. xxp

(I mean in a what-color-is-yr-parachute way)

I am turning 27 in a few months, too, eh? Yes, I am. Assuming some ill twist of fate doesn't strike me down untimely, I reckon I have a good at least 30-40 years to get shit done. I don't think anything has to be done so early in life, agree w/the man that loves little-loved aerosmith albums here, from my side of the fence: by imagining some kind of Platonic timeline for X things done in order to be a Good Person, or top of Maslow's pyriamid, or whatevs...you are fucking yourself over. I mean unless you wanted to do something that biologically necessitated some time frame. The only thing I can think of there is like out-childbirthing Ms. Duggar.

I mean I am starting now the things I want to do, but if you are in your 20s and worried your time has run out then ???!?!?!..?

its not that yr time is run out so much that by yr mid 20s u probably know if ur the type of person with the ruthless determination to get shit done or not. like all the ppl who are like theres too much pressure just chill idk thats a good lyfe strategy but u hav 2 b really driven to accomplish ~big things~ imo

people who put that sort of pressure on themselves must love to make themselves feel bad
they're the same ones who turn into richard yates characters later in life imo

good lesson to learn: you're not that special

I've sorta gone from caring about accomplishments to caring about experiences, but I never really had specific dreams that I wanted to fulfill anyway.

im 28, and i was 22 when i started posting here, so ill answer this.

i never really had dreams of a specific nature growing up, more of a general magnitude, like a certain degree of intellectual/emotional/productive engagement with friends, work, hobbies, and home. as i get older (and i guess stabler? theoretically?), the specific nature of my work-, social/romantic-, and interests-life has made some kind of neat sense, like "oh wow some of this is a surprise, but some of it is really pleasingly predictable!" after years of feeling a lot of anxiety about my level of (non-specific) achievement, im feeling more and more comfortable with my own ability to navigate in real time. i guess im still hoping to develop and implement more crazy dreams of my youth.

Burroughs was 48 when Naked Lunch was published in the US and his literary career began, so don't give up!
you younguns have another 20 years to go shoot junk in Tangiers or whatevs.

On it!

Burroughs was 48 when Naked Lunch was published in the US and his literary career began, so don't give up!

lol this is what I always mention when referencing my failed literary career, don't know what I'm gonna do when I'm 49

I guess god was pretty old when the bible was published

The process of redefining one's dreams is iterative throughout one's life. Just ask some six or seven year old kids and they will almost all plan on being famous rock stars, movie stars or star athletes. These dreams will change. Then change again. And again.

Looking back at my 20s, it was the time when I had to face up to the fact that making choices invariably limits one's options, and that the opportunitites to advance along any desired path arise asymmetrically. I was OK with that, but I had to put aside my fierce early-20s desire to be a poet and scholar. Rather than be a poet, I flirted with being a novelist at age 28, an advertising copy writer when I was 30, and I became a technical writer when I was 38. I left that field when I was 48.

Now I am 55 and I am still looking for the best way to stay happy. It's a moving target. I really have no idea what to expect, and no plans that I can't revise. Radically, if necessary. I am OK with that, too.

leaving my job in two weeks to do what i've always wanted to do. - what is it that a cutty wants to do & to what extent does it involve bicycling?

good lesson to learn: you're not that special

Haha this is a hard lesson to learn when your goal is "be as special as your direct family". I ordered a Richard Yates book, excited!

dust in the wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind

who wants the things they want and who needs the things they think they do

i think 25 year old me would be pretty impressed with everything 35 year old me will have accomplished; at the very least, having so many video games would be good for some dap

Gads! If I could transport my current library back into the hands of my 23 year old self, I think I would have died from an excess of joy. Too bad I can't.

also there would be a time paradox cause you would be dead

what is it that a cutty wants to do & to what extent does it involve bicycling?

ha, no, not a pro-cycling career, those guys might as well be on welfare. i'll be doing entertainment law, music mostly.

Xposts

It's not so much the accomplishments thing anymore- I have long since accepted that I'm never going to direct a great film or find academic success or whatever- so much as the experiences side of things. My 20s are more than halfway over and I spent most of them depressed out of my mind stuck in the shithole town I'd spent my entire childhood dreaming of escaping after I had a kind of nervous breakdown and failed out of school. What horrifies me more than anything is that I missed out on the modest, low-end ambitions- shit like "have a normal social life, maybe meet one other person who cares about the stuff I love and doesn't stare at me like I'm a mental patient for wanting to talk about dance music or foreign movies" or "do not spend the entirety of my adolescence and early adulthood as a socially retarded hermit."

good 2 know - maybe I can hit u up when the RIAA come knocking down my door.

xp

most of my dreams were modest and achievable (independence, decent job, cool girlfriend, time to read). i like to aim low.

the only "crazy dream" i hang onto is to make records that i like and that hopefully other people hear and like. i'm closing in on one now and going back and forth between getting my hopes up (that it'll turn out really well, that i can make a little something happen with it) and telling myself not to worry about it, that the important thing is to finish something and learn from it and move on to the next one.

the great thing about "giving up" your dreams to be some famous musician that you had as a kid is realizing that you can have all sorts of really great, really important experiences making music with all sorts of people....you just have to let go of the idea that you'll ever be well known or make money at it.

completely liberating to let that go IMO

What I want most to give my children is an understanding of what's out there, so that they can dream interesting dreams, so that they dream imaginatively and capaciously. And "realistically" too, but not "realistically" in a dumpy sense: not in the sense of "this is all you'll ever accomplish so settle for it" but in the sense of "this is something you could actually do if you set your mind and heart to it"...so I don't want them to dream minor dreams but I also don't want them to dream to be nose tackles for the Bears or the first circus ringleader in space.

o the naysaying that first circus ringleader in space will have to work past..

you just have to let go of the idea that you'll ever be well known or make money at it.

For me it's more like I've let go of the childhood revenge driven "I'LL SHOW THOSE BASTICHES!!!" pop star ideas, and instead I've "settled" for being a real life musician who can actually play the instrument they're holding.

A friend of mine remarked in passing "I decided at 18, I'd never be famous"

To which I replied "I think I was 37 when I came to that conclusion"

Well I can still be famous, but instead of for being a shiny cardboard cut-out, it'll be for actually being good at something.

BLimey, you were a shiny cardboard cut-out?

I'm still young and full of dreams ready to be crushed. that said, I dismissed my dreams of making good music and getting some kind of significant recognition for it long ago, and more recently gave up making music entirely because I am just so bad at it that I can't even have rudimentary fun doing it. Curse of a massive lack of artistic ability.

currently still determined as hell to have a mediocre academic career. but wondering also if having some job, just whatever, and time to enjoy music / books / people / things I can't currently afford (and have never been able to afford) cuz I'm a scrounging grad student would be so bad.

Don't quit making music. At one point I quit for nearly ten years, and really really regret it. Seriously, that time spent away from music rates as the second most stupid thing I've ever done.

the only adults that "want to be famous" are insane/insufferable/generally horrible people

The whole fame thing is irrelevant to developing your talents, which is ace.

that too. fame in any endeavor is way, way WAY secondary to actually enjoying said endeavor. why does anyone think being famous is desirable anyway? most famous people seem pretty miserable/resentful of it to me.

like, play music if you enjoy playing music. practice will guarantee improvement. everything else is immaterial.

I am genuinely amazingly untalented. I get frustrated trying to learn very basic chord progressions, which was even so when I was playing a lot. If I find people willing to join me in the world's sloppiest punk band, I'm good to go.

why does anyone think being famous is desirable anyway?

Simple: it's validation. I've never wanted to be cover-of-magazines famous, but I've sometimes wanted to be known and respected within a particular community, whether that's for writing, music, crosswords, or whatever.

not that any of this is directed at me necessarily, but i just want to be clear that i'm not talking about getting famous. with all of the bands i play drums for, i'm just happy to get to play with good musicians, participate in the community, and have music in my life, etc. but with this electronic music thing i imagine there could come a point where it seems silly to put in countless hours to make music if no one is going to hear it. i mean, it's "fun" and i feel driven to do it but it's also work and a timesuck.

xp

yeah, when i think of validation for music it's not about huge crowds or $$$, but usually gaining the respect of specific people (whom i look up to).

respect is a completely separate beast from fame, imho

What horrifies me more than anything is that I missed out on the modest, low-end ambitions- shit like "have a normal social life, maybe meet one other person who cares about the stuff I love and doesn't stare at me like I'm a mental patient for wanting to talk about dance music or foreign movies" or "do not spend the entirety of my adolescence and early adulthood as a socially retarded hermit."

you did not "miss out" on any of these

you are still extremely young

ten years from now you will probably regret having thought of any of your present situations as "how things turned out" instead of "a work still very much in progress," so change course w/that outlook

to me the point of being a "famous" musician would be to the extent of getting to know people, being able to do tours and putting out records in some way as opposed to just playing with and/or for your friends. this is a crazy dream i still haven't given up on i guess.

how odd that the musicians of ilx would find themselves drawn to this topic...

being famous would rule, you guys are crazy

you and me iatee, let's do hollywood

wait nvm

-_-

getting to know people, being able to do tours and putting out records in some way

none of these involve fame in any way FYI

jordan fwiw i totally respect the way you approach music -- you play drums in all kinds of bands, enjoy it, and don't care if people know your name because you're enjoying yourself regardless
that's admirable

Looking back at my 20s, it was the time when I had to face up to the fact that making choices invariably limits one's options

Argh, this is so true. I'm still not sure what I want to do with my life because I can't CHOOSE (yet I still have this notion that I should have chosen & dedicated my life to it years ago ??)
Mind you at the grand old age of 28 I have 'accomplished' some of the best things I could imagine. My life recently took quite an unexpected turn when I moved countries, which I never anticipated, so don't worry about being 'stuck' at 27 or w/e.

i gave up on people around age 9. never had crazy dreams career wise other than to not have one.

Just now. This thread was the last straw.

What age is "just now"? (/idle curiosity)

There's nothing but decay and the joy of feeling superior to somebody else

You didn't look nearly defiant enough to pull that one off, NV. Try it again while jutting your chin out and snapping your fingers agressively.

Pulling yr chin in a little bit is a good look sometimes

think mb i sd this b4 but my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time - mission accomplished

― ( ª_ª)○º° (Lamp), Tuesday, April 20, 2010 1:25 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

When I was younger and had no idea what I wanted to do I used to tell people that I was just going to be rad. ha.

I old but I don't really think I've given up on anything. I never really had concrete goals but more hopes to have some amazing experiences and to see lots of different things/places which I have. There are definitely a few things I'd like to do that are always in the back of my mind (travel to Asia and cuddle a baby orangutan to name a couple) but I believe that I'll do those in time.

Last month, when the love of my life who had rekindled all my latent dreams of making music and being around it so awesomely, dumped me unexpectedly.

Really just give up, I do.

my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time
my only real dream was just 2 be rad & play nintendo all the time

the problem with the crazy dreams of my youth was that they were awfully broad and vague. like, they involved writing and ... being a genius or something. at some point i came to terms with not being a genius, but i'm going on 20 years of making a living from writing and editing, so that doesn't seem too bad. (check back with me in another 10 years, when journalism is really and truly dead and i'm doing corporate communications somewhere...) my dreams have kept shifting, i guess. i still have some, which may or may not lead anywhere. there are times where i think "omg if i die tomorrow i won't have done x, y, or z," but then i realize that that will be true even if i live another 100 years.

but to answer the question, i don't think there was one particular age. it's just, things change as you get older, you learn more about the world and what you can expect from it, and the way you think about these things shifts accordingly. i assume it will continue to.

Liking this thread.
the only dream I gave up on was to seriously get into academia, but I only started having it in my mid-twenties. I did really try but it somehow never worked out. 10 years later, it's a mild regret, but, you know, whatever.

i give up, probably, now

(r)age quit...

I dunno, if some well meaning dude contacted me and said "we need some songs man" I'd reel off about 20 songs that are composed/arranged and finished only in my brane...

still LIVING THE DREAM babies

dreams of inheriting huge amounts from my dad are slowly dwindling since he told me what the mortgage is, so i can actually date this back to march 2008

otoh, i did lose my virginity that one time, so 1 out of 2 ain't bad.

Finds out inheritance isn't going to be much, thinks "fuck it"...

eh maybe i've parsed that clumsily, i lost my virginity IN THE 90'S LAYDEES.

one day I'm just gonna drop all my shit and go knight-errant

― MPSIA (acoleuthic), 20 April 2010 17:33 (Yesterday) Bookmark

motherfucker i said the same thing 6 months ago

I guess my #1 ambition as a kid was to become an archaeologist and find out awesome shit about dinosaurs, the second was to become a baseball player. when I was 11 or 12 I would read about kids who had published their first book at 12 and that would make me really jealous, hah. I think my other childhood dream was to become an awesome video game designer but I was pretty rubbish at coding.

nearing the start of my third year after graduation and only now beginning to let go of the notion that I have to be 'successful' cause other alumni of my university are. right now all I really want of life is a decent job which gives me a decent amount of free time/disposable income and a girlfriend who I like to hang out with. also I would like to make pictures that, to paraphrase jordan upthread, other people like to look at.

also I would like to get a dog at some point but as I'm living year-to-year at the moment it would not be a responsible thing to do.

also I would like to make pictures that, to paraphrase jordan upthread, other people like to look at.

ya one things thats definitely changed is that my goal for writing has gone from "as wide an audience as possible" to "as appreciative an audience as possible"

you are reaching a pretty wide and appreciative audience here on ilx!

cant win a dam nobel prize on ilx

not with that attitude

I was never, even as a kid, envious of other 9 or 10 or 11 year olds who were sucessful making creative works. I suspect that I somehow realized, on some level, that those kids almost always had some kind of coercive and/or ghostwriting help behind the scenes.

there is this pervasive myth, though, that people's best stuff is produced when they're young - it always seems to be a sign of awe to say that this or that artist's work was produced when they were only 18/19/20 years old etc. (maybe because a lot of critics are failed/unsuccessful artists?) good to see that there's been plenty of debunking of that chestnut on this thread. there are plenty of artists whose most prodigious output wasn't until they were well into middle to old age.

ah yeah but have you ever actually heard of any of those old farts?

no :(

kevin phillips was still a breadman at 24 iirc.

eh that's all i got.

I will say that Wallace Stevens' first published book came at the age of 44

never heard of that old fart tbh

he was a poet and didn't even know it iirc

Some are on here: http://www.go-quick.com/ILXVol3.html (xposts)

is that just a bit of fun, so be cool tho?

there's also a lot of science(psuedoscience?) that claims the brain's abilities peak at like, 25? cf. chess geniuses who lose it after turning 30

nah they mostly lose it due to burnout from coke parties and girls

or sometimes cause the jews in charge of the american government start spying on them and stealing their money

I know for a fact your ability to be 25 years old peaks around that age.

dyao what kind of pictures do you make? I like your posts about basketball.

aw thx :} I keep a tumblr here so far I'm trying to become a robert frank imitator

so folks who are 28 have become the "older" posters on ilx.
thnks for making me feel really fuckin' old.

as for giving up on, or redefining my so called crazy dreams.

i can tell you the exact date :

06/12/96

the birth date of my firstborn.

from that day on i knew my life was never again to be anything i would have any control over, as it was for a long long time going to be all about paying the bills and keeping a roof over our heads.

however, now that he and his younger brother are getting to an age where i get an element of freedom and flexibility back, some ideas and green shoots of dreams are beginning to form once again.

i have to say though i have absolutely no regrets being somewhat dream-less for the majority of my early adult life.

low expectations = less failure and more enjoyment out of any good that does happen to pop into your life.

also, i never in a million years expected anything to happen when i set up the crappy website 10 years ago, it was just a new distraction from the office drone world i lived in, so all the really cool stuff that has happened in the last 10 years as a result of the site totally spins my head amd makes me feel very very priviledged.

oh, and i have a strong feeling one particular long term dream is going to come true this year.

^ kinda curious as to the last sentence tbh

well if it happens then all will be revealed on ilm of course.

not so curious that i'll be adding 'ILM' to site new answers, so be sure to update thread!

okedoke.

note : it's nothing exciting, just a little tick box i have wanted to be able to scrub off my list.

Everyone on ilx now past this stage, right

yeah fuck dreams

tbh i never expected to be live past my 20s due to a heart condition so never really bothered w dreams kinda just coasting from here on out.

i do have fun tho!

just whippin bats and stakin vamps

=)

24-25 ish.

Never had any dreams other than consistent food/shelter

Well being rich I guess, I still dream of that

I probably wanted to be a rock star when I was a kid or something

26. I haven't really recovered a sense of purpose, but I wouldn't want to go back either.

I think I was serious about the idea of being a musician until I was about 27. That was a year into marriage and about when I decided to go to law school.

I'm 35 right now and honestly not sure I can handle looking hard enough at myself to give a real answer to the original thread question. But more positively, I do think my 30s have been a good period for the "redefine" part, or specifically redefining my relationship with those dreams and how I choose to feel about them. Whereas late 20s did involve a lot of anguished awareness of the possible futures that were slipping away, practically in front of my eyes, or the loves I might have found if I'd zigged left instead of right just a few years before.

It's still sometimes hard to really accept the ways I've let certain hobbies or ambitions lapse - but I'm better now at recognizing that, apart from time spent goofing around on the Internet, to a large extent that lapse came because I, in effect, chose to put time into OTHER hobbies and ambitions that have remained happy, healthy parts of my life. So I really don't work on music at all these days, but that no longer makes me feel like a failure, it's just a marker of how much time I've put into photography, which I really enjoy the heck out of, and have gotten much better at. Also I'm old enough to have some perspective about the legit vs. poor reasons behind some of the dreams in question. I know myself and it's safe to say I would not have enjoyed huge swaths of what being a rock star actually involves --- it was just a marker for my admiration for my friends to whom music came more naturally, mixed with some ego-driven desires (wanting to be loved, validated by praise/recognition, liking to imagine that my little words and tunes would strike a chord with millions or w/e).

Actual "career" dreams are a whole nother kettle of fish since I'm still working on a PhD which means the present is still sort of suspended before some possible futures - but I'm also living and enjoying that present in a way that I didn't in the late-20s years of my master's degree.

Fwiw I still daydream about having a "second wind" in music all the time, even if it's just playing in local bars or whatever, and I still try to play and write when I can.

51

im 31 and im a living dream

jk i do want to perform music in front of people other than my 4 y/o tho

Never gave up on dreams entirely, but my dreams have changed a lot over time. In my 20s, it was more pie-in-the-sky daydreams; now, it's more boring, achievable dreams (many of which I have achieved). Am overall happier now than I was in my 20s

27-30

I have no idea where all my old musical gear is from before then. Somebody’s basement? Don’t really care, except for the E1010 delay, really.

I realize I am a bit of a special case given what I do but uh never I guess?

If anything it's the other way around for me, and some 7, 8 years ago started having 'crazy dreams' and actually trying to make them happen. Before that I was mostly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

10

34 and i prob am working harder towards my dreams than ever. some of them anyway.

tho they have changed over time.

Straight answer never had dreams, peace love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB9_sf6oV1o

I've achieved a lot of things I dreamt of, but on a lower level than I wanted. I'm a published writer, but it's far from a career and most of the work I've done is for free. I've been a musician and songwriter, but never really had much published outside of a couple of compilations and self-releases. I've been had success as a gig promoter, but never made any money from it. I'm an ad copywriter, but not for a big agency and only working on a local level. I live in a city. I have lots of friends and a wonderful partner and a fairly interesting life. I live in a house, but it's rented. I can drive but I don't own a car.

What I've generally found is that you don't achieve your dreams, even when you do. My 15 year old self would be proud of me, but also mildly disappointed I'm not a touring rock musician with several critically lauded albums under my belt ;-)

I never really had grand ambitions. I've had lots of small ones that I've mostly achieved, but never a grand scheme. Most consistent / grand one is to not be an asshole, and I can't really judge whether I've achieved that myself.

I've played in little weirdo bands since the age of 18 (I'm now 45) and apart from a small purple patch in the late nineties where I/we reached the level of putting out 7 inches/radio sessions/small write ups/touring Belgium, and so on. I wonder if I ever was under the illusion that I'd make money or a living out of music.

I had a decent parallel career at the time and the vague plan was to jump ship if the big guy chomping a cigar arrived backstage one day and wrote the hefty cheque while declaring "You are a swan!", given my musical activities this was never gonna happen and I guess I must have known that.

However a few of my musician friends from that time period have persisted and a some have gained a modicum of recognition (I'm not sure I could call it success exactly) through sheer determination, something I just didn't share, but I often wonder how they feel about it all, so much investment in a creative endeavour that is fraught and almost totally thankless and what's the return?

Is it better than an office job? Yeah probably, but I get to thinking about the future and shit like translatable skill sets and I just shudder at the thought of where I'd be now if I had been signed to some indie label in 1999.

Once I achieve a small ambition (like getting published in a proper paper or magazine, for instance) I seldom feel a need to repeat it. Does anyone relate to that?

I only lost my virginity the once

I don't know if it was ever my ambition to be a drunken bum

I'm sure I will still have a death grip on my unrealized dreams as they lower me into the grave.

My dream is to be cremated and my ashes to be ingested by my surviving enemies.

20-21 when I realized I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was. Got a second wind in the early 2000s, then gave up again around 2006.

I fulfilled my half of the dream-realisation bargain this year (did I say?), but then nobody read it, so the dream goes on I guess. am 30 and have been feeling something of a lost wastrel since the fruits of my imagination fell on stony ground but I'm sure that I have time (not sure how much) to realise something more substantial

Yeah u said

You're 30? Fucking hellfire.

Redefine? In this economy? gtfo! Look everybodee I am achieving my crazy dreams or I'll die trying, baby!

My dream usually is to be a drunken bum, it is the prospect of becoming a horribly sober bum that gives me nightmares!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtAyhl--CWY

This is quite a sad thread, but such is life.

I had too much ambition when I was younger. I realized I couldn't achieve them at 29. I re-adjusted my goals and learned to appreciate the little things in life and not take anything for granted, so these days I live a more fulfilling life for the most part.

I keep wondering if I should say something new on this thread. TSOS's post just now, though, provides a useful perspective -- it's kinda where I'm at. As I said much earlier, happily down to dream and see what happens. Still am, but I've realized I've achieved quite a bit already, just in a different way than I might have guessed. The little things, as you say, in my own scale. I've not yet published a book but I've been published in them; I've been published in a paper that my mom read when she was training to be a teacher before I born; I've travelled to various spots in the world I didn't initially think I'd ever go to; etc. And that's just the personal ego boost stuff -- I've been very, constantly, lucky in famiily, in friends and for the past five years in love, and that's all down to making sure I've giving back to people as I can. I'd count that as dreams come true, because the more I go on and hear and read people's stories, I recognize how rare that can be -- how it can seem like a dream.

I'm still going to achieve my ambitions, it's just going to take a bit longer than I thought it would at age 18. But that's because goals like "release an album", "get into a successful career", etc. are a bit more involved than I thought they were back then.
What I've really noticed as I've got older is how many of my peers have dropped off the radar completely. People who were going to be world leaders in their chosen fields seem to have just vanished.

I was talking to an old school friend the other day and we were quantifying how many of our peers have fared. It worked out something like 5% Suicide, 15% Heroin addiction, 15% doing prison sentences (including Ireland's most prolific serial killer still in Dublin doing life). And both of us are dismal failures with older siblings that are high flyers. He was from a family of 3 adopted siblings, of which one is some bigshot in the local filth and the other is a doctor. He is an ex-heroin addict who has been clean for 15 years + is a betting shop manager. I'm an ex-electrician loser with an older brother who lives in a penthouse in Dubai, who wrote software which has been used on the construction of shitloads of concrete structures including Wembley. I've rewired many buildings in West Yorkshire and now live in penury! But if there is one thing I've learned in this era, it is whenever you think you've hit rock bottom there are always a shitload more levels you can fall down to! So *dreams* become much less ambitious - the lower you fall :p

crazy dreams of youth often turn out to be stupid and unrealistic and not worth achieving tbrr

Just like Ned to modestly omit the fact that he won the internet.

I've "achieved my dreams" in that I've published several books (some from reputable publishers, one of which included Ned's work, and others via indies or self-published), started a website that's low-traffic but after seven years is well regarded within its micro-niche, and am currently able to pay the rent, have health insurance, stay out of debt and buy all the books and CDs and Blu-Rays I want by doing writing/editing-related work from my couch. At 45, I have absolutely zero interest in becoming "famous" as an author or in any other way; what I want is to maintain my current lifestyle and not die of complications from diabetes exacerbated by health insurance fuckery. The final dream, of course, is to figure out a way to do it from a country other than the US.

I can't remember what my dreams were. Mostly I think I wanted a fast computer. I've got one of those now.

Pretty sure my only goal left in life is to die.

Just like Ned to modestly omit the fact that he won the internet.

him and julian assange! haha

i only started to try to accomplish my dreams a few years ago, and i've been depressed ever since. i depressed before that, though, it's just a different kind now

children of tomorrow
watch out
i depressed
because dreams

xp!
Mentioned in the same breath as Julian Assange though.

dispensers of documents

Man, that's right. What a listing.

I wanted to set my sights low so as to not get disappointed - basically have the same quality of life as my parents. currently struggling with these meager goals..

I love this thread. I love you guys. I've been thinking about age – and disappointment – a lot in the last few weeks. A friend died young in August, and it put me into a little tailspin/life eval mood, and it's good to take companionship with others and their genuflections.

I started lurking on ILX when I was in college – and posting here my first year out. I'm much closer to forty than thirty now, and the starry-eyed doofus I was back then would sneer at me on an "older folks" thread.

When I started posting here, I lived in New England and had a teaching certificate and an okay job working at a bad school, but I wanted to take the writing world by storm. I quit working in schools, moved across the country, met Ned all the ILXors of LA, got an expensive graduate degree, tried writing – and at moments succeeded beyond my expectations. I got to work in movies for a moment. I got to publish dumb little things in local free papers. It was exciting, except when it was tedious and just like any other job. For two years, I *did* support myself by writing, but it felt kind of unrewarding, and I found myself heading back toward teaching. Then I crashed and burned-out (use the search function), got myself homeless – well documented, again – and fled to live on a fucked-up distant-relative's couch. From that couch until the moment of this post is ten years of toil, concession, cross-country moves, and shit-eating, but also wonderful things like dating, marriage, graduate school (again), travel and a marvelous job.

As a straight line (New England teacher in 2002 to New England teacher now) I have made very little progress, and I feel a bit bad about myself. But as a journey and a collection of experiences, the life between matched bookends is wonderful. I still have adventures waiting: fatherhood, publishing, but I think I *did* get to the places I wanted, only to find out that they weren't as vital as the places I'd started.

good stuff, remy

When I was about 7-8, 1974ish, and my dad (in the wake of a disappointing report card) dashed my days-old dream of rock stardom. (He asked me rhetorically how much do rock stars make:

"... $10 a day...?")

Nicely said indeed, Remy, and great to see your full account of this sweep of time. Happy to have been a small part of it.

Yeah! It's weird. ILX has been one of a very few constants, though I don't post much anymore, and when I do it's from alternate logins. My days are, like, consistently fourteen hours long now. I know that I used to be busy with work (but in a way that would let me sneak off for twenty minutes here or there to write about farts or coffee or Ridley Scott) but now I am busy in a way that doesn't allow me to visit here until it's late at night and I'm too tired to compose anything.

man you went to graduate school twice, that's messed up

Straight answer never had dreams, peace love

otm

i am proud that it was i who first discovered that ned raggett had won the internet, however. (even if i don't remember how it happened -- i never read thought catalog)

when my eyes went bad I realized I wouldn't be an astronaut
when I got to high school I realized I wouldn't be a chick magnet
when I got to college I realized I wouldn't be a real DJ
when I realized I wouldn't make a career worth a damn out of any of the other stuff I liked as a teenager (comics, music, radio, film) I dropped out of college
when I got turned down to go carry top secret mailbags in the shit, I realized there was nothing for me in the military I wanted to do
when I got divorced I learned basically nothing, but I kinda gave up all my hobbies for a while, which was a terrible idea
when I met science hottie I grew different dreams, perhaps, but I still want to leave the world better than I found it and now I know what tikkun olam means

I'm an oldster I guess (53). The part of me that "dreams", or harbors dreams, dreams held since my youth, has never gone away, I feel, nor have the specific dreams themselves. I think what has changed for me lately is that instead of scolding myself for the distance yet to be traveled, regretting certain choices, or hating my geographic surroundings and general life circumstances because they're not as glamorous as I might hope, I am now figuring out more and more how to live fully exactly where I'm at, and sinking more deeply into where my gut tells me to go. I realize this sounds vague and not terribly descriptive. But no, I've never given up on my childhood/adolescent dreams of what life should be like, or who I should become. I happen to trust that child's understanding of what my heart needs more than some later, mid-30s version of myself, which were frankly crippled under the weight of then-overwhelming depression and self-hatred.

"which WAS frankly crippled", I should say

i'm living my dream rn. however, i picked a really boring dream

circuitous fucked up crashed and burned and started from square one lives like remy b's are cool to me

Do ppl have dreams at this age? I define it as something kinda either unattanable or something you've already done. At this point, I see dreams as a thing you want to accomplish that require a re-organisation of your time and resources around the bits you have to do in your life (such as paying the rent) so that you can work for them. And the bits I am working on are achievable to a satisfying extent.

stfu "do ppl have dreams at this age"
of course
as along as i am alive, i will have aspirations/dreams/whatever you want to call them

these questions are dripping with ageism

it's a sort of jaded self-ageism tbf

lol at age 48 my dream is to not die penniless and wallowing in filth

LL - aspirations are different from dreams. As are the types of dreams you have in your teens as opposed to your adult life.

https://youtu.be/goPz6coNkAE?t=2m

My dreams are pretty consistent, and I think most of them are here to stay, even if they’ve passed their expiration date. My relationship with my dreams has changed, tho, and as a middle-aged person I’m more easily able to confront them as such... and to derive more satisfaction from their fulfillment (or from fulfilling tiny little pieces of them).

I keep struggling with this question. Tbh, I remember dreading adulthood more than anticipating great things. The world hasn't been reorganized into anarcho-syndicalist communes but I think my current professional, creative, and personal lives are about as close as I could hope to what I might have dreamt of crazily in youth, although who knows for how long? What I didn't anticipate was how exhausting and stressful and filled with self-doubt life can be when you actually pursue things you want and care about.

when i was a teen my only dream was to live away from where i grew up
being a teen was not a carefree dreamy time for me

i guess this means i don't have wild and crazy dreams and never have

aspirations are different from dreams. As are the types of dreams you have in your teens as opposed to your adult life.

not necessarily. a lot of my adult "dreams" are very similar to my teen dreamz. i still just want to create things and be able to support myself financially by doing so. that's basically what i dreamed about in high school. back then the things i wanted to make were songs, now they're more often visual things, and i'm sure when i'm in my 60s and 70s i'll still by trying (and failing) to make something. there's an archetypal "adult dream" that involves a happy family, a house that's paid off, your smiling kid graduating college and landing a steady job, retirement and fucking all night in a cruise ship or whatever, but it's not everyone's adult dream. if you don't have plans to have children and you don't really care about making a ton of money and passing on your accumulated wealth to someone, then you find yourself dreaming about different things.

it's not everyone's adult dream
otm

the kids/college isn't any kind of dream - its just generally what people do.

some people
not all people

also some people do dream of that

i am not one of them

Like that can be sold as a package, or as a discrete set of products a lot of the time that give an appearance of a dream..

I think an aspiration is, like you describe, the ability to keep making music - it doesn't matter if it fails. The dream might be to thrive and be successful in terms of recognition or even payment.

xps

Yeah, I remember a high school class where the teacher asked everyone what their future dreams were. Almost everyone answered something like "married with a house, two kids, a [insert middle-class job]". It was seriously eye-opening for me.

3xp

I think it was the first time it occurred to me that suburbs like the one I grew up in exist because some people actually want to live there.

as a young person i never allowed myself the dream of making things but now i do
if anything, age has improved the quality and specificity of my dreams

Yeah, my experience was similar. That was at most a dream in the sense that I had close to zero expectation that someone could actually make a living out of something creative or even fulfilling in reality. My only real dream was to not depend on or have to listen to my parents.

exactly!! my parents or anyone.

I’m not scornful of that dream, because “home, kids” contains multitudes and is a fair summary of a pragmatic and rewarding life experience. That said, my “home, kids” dream is a Democrat’s dream of a cool city apartment with one little weirdo, no car, and an international vacation every year... not a Republican single family detached dwelling, SUV, and suburban school system with an active PTA

there is a wide "not for me" area between scornful and dreamful

i guess i had dreams when i was a teenager that i would go into music. i used to mime along to records and stuff, imagining i was playing in front of a huge crowd, etc. i was on a cocktail of prescriptions at the time and used to have a lot of manic episodes so this would incorporate.

my parents were always very practical, they told me i could do art and music but i should always have a plan B and i should never go full-in on it. my dad was a musician so he was a bit more encouraging, buying me instruments an teaching me how to play and stuff. my mom (and stepdad) were entirely the opposite, never interested in my music, never once went to a show. anytime it came up (and it did a lot, my two brothers are musicians) they would ask me if i was making any money at it. anyways as a result i think i occurred a lot of shame about it.

after high school i went to a state college cos that is what you do even though i had no idea what i wanted to study. around this time i met a ton of musicians and friends and got involved in a scene. i took off school for a few years, it was a lot of fun, made lots of art and music. eventually i got into video art and graphic design and decided to try and go back to school. my parents threw a fit when they saw that i was taking "liberal arts classes" and gave me shit about wasting my life. that shame started creeping back in. eventually after a year or two and getting disilluioned with playing the same 3-4 shitty bars for beer money i had to make a choice to go on tour or to go to school and i chose school. of course i do nothing with my degree and my friends went on to be professional and successful musicians lol. yeah i kind of fucked myself by second guessing.

im still glad i went to school, and i got to live out a lifelong dream of going to Egypt, seeing the pyramids, etc. i wouldn't trade any of that back. and it's pointless to think "What if...?" but it's really tough sometimes to not. where i am career wise right now is alright but it's a job and that's it. the thing about music and art is you can do it just as a creatively fulfilling hobby thing to do, you can do that for the rest of your life. no reason to plug into a scene, be legitimized by publication, etc. so many creeps and hangers on, so many talentless hacks in any scene, you don't really need any of it.

imo 25-26 is when i gave up entirely on love, art, etc.

I didn't say anything about scorn, yeah. I really don't think Democrat vs Republican maps onto those differing lifestyle ideals, tbh.

Growing up, I never really had a specific goal in life. Then, married at 21 and with a kid at 24, my goal was just to maintain our reasonably comfortable, reasonably happy family life — enough income for pop culture distractions and an environment conducive for our daughter to grow and thrive. I did that as my role shifted from husband to caregiver. In 2014 a real, attainable goal formed in me — get out of Mississippi and never look back — and my wife said "if you do that, you'll have to do it without me." So I've been sitting on my ass for three years trying to decide whether it's worth it to me to blow up my family (figuratively). So yeah, I'm a month away from 54 and I have a dream, and it's caused me nothing but misery.

My decisions only look like decisions in retrospect: at the time, they are the next thing, but end up having lasting and in the end irrevocable consequences. I stopped playing music seriously sometime in my late 30s - not because I decided, well this is going nowhere and it's time to get a real job but because the band I was in ground to a halt and no one else asked me to do anything. And then it was years later and hey, I was an ex-muso....
I did an MA and then a PhD without really thinking about an academic career, but then, as a consequence, obvious to anyone but me, that's where I ended up - teaching, inevitably, in a much worse university that the ones I studied at. I gave up drinking abotu the same time, and smoking, just after my mother died - in retrospect, it all looks life changing, but at the time, after a year of looking after her, and other shit, it was just a temporary thing - but I haven't drunk alcohol or taken drugs in 15 years.
I've just made, for thre first time ever it feels like, a definite, life changing and quite possibly foolish decision, in full knowledge of the consequences - maybe the first adult decision ever. At 57.

My only real dream was to not depend on or have to listen to my parents.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:03 (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly!! my parents or anyone.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:05 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sometimes I feel like this particular dream probably turned out to be the hardest to fully realize.

when i was a teen my only dream was to live away from where i grew up

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, October 14, 2017 5:46 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mine too. I didn't know what a person could do, back then. I had to learn a lot before I could have dreams.

william - that's rough. i was lucky enough to when the time came to gtfo from indiana my spouse was supportive (even though i expressed the need in the most emotionally immature and bullying way possible). bad as things are for me now i feel the most for the people who haven't been able to gtfo like i was.

I guess my earlier dreams have now been dissolved in a warm, general sense of fulfillment, which is very nice in its own way, but does tend to lessen one's sense of having large life goals still left to achieve. I suppose this is not a horrible thing once one surpasses 60. I am disgustingly contented with my life.

I had to learn a lot before I could have dreams

Same here. My ambition age 16 was to be some place where people didn't want to instantly beat the shit out of me for being different to them. That ambition got fulfilled surprisingly quickly - I moved away to go to university - but I was left with the totally unexpected problem of what I was actually going to do after that. All of my drive and motivation had been focused on getting out of that shitty town, but once I was out there was no goal or plan, so I drifted for a long long time.

I didn't say anything about scorn, yeah. I really don't think Democrat vs Republican maps onto those differing lifestyle ideals, tbh.

Pew begs to differ...

http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/overview_3-5/

Ha, interesting.

Closing in on 50, I feel like I'm sort of circling back toward some of those dreams/goals, but which a more grounded sense of what's possible or likely. Also an awareness of how little time there actually is to do anything at all.

my dreams were of becoming a musician and author who made things that did for a few people what the music I listened to and the books I read did for me. those dreams I have realized; it took a long time and a lot of work, and, for me anyway, the realization of those dreams is accompanied by a strong desire to make good on that realization: to do better work, to never rest or grow too comfortable in the pursuit of getting as good as I can get at what I do.

I don't know that I'd have understood, without having cleared those hurdles, that my real dreams are of making the family my children grow up in as healthy and nurturing and safe as possible. but that is where my heart is now, and it's an endless dream: to be a good father to my children, to never lose sight of how central this role is to my sense of myself. (those of you who know me will understand why being part of a healthy family is, for me, truly the stuff of dreams.) for my marriage to be what my parents' marriage was not. to set a good example. these may seem like modest dreams compared to big outsize ambitions but for me they have all the hallmarks of dreams: big mountains to climb, the allure but also the terror of the unknown, the feel of the unreal.

i never really had dreams. i always just wanted to make it day to day. make enough money to live. i was on my own when i was 19 with no money and i just took it from there. get a job. have enough to live on. right now i have more than i ever thought i'd have. i have MORE than enough. even though i still don't have a lot of money. i have plenty of food to eat! when i was writing a lot i did think about writing a book someday. that was the only future thing i think i've ever thought about or allowed myself to think about. i don't write anymore though. i just work as hard as i can on my store. and hang out with my kids and maria. and watch a lot of t.v. and read sci-fi.

I've been thinking about this and feel like sharing a little more. I'm 32 now. The only time in my life when I felt intrinsically motivated towards a career was in university and grad school when I was hoping to go into academia. For a bunch of reasons (depression, inability to complete work, feeling overwhelmed and lacking guidance), I lost that motivation, and I haven’t found anything to replace it. I'm living with my father now and only working part-time either with him or through connections of his, and I feel constantly bad about it. I have a lot of trouble thinking about jobs and long-term plans. My brain seizes up and I can't stop crying whenever I talk about it, with family or therapists or whoever. My main desire right now is to move out, which for me is a mentally hard prospect.

At the same time, I look back on who I was a few years ago and I see someone much more narrowly focused, insecure, and thoughtless. I feel like I've grown since losing that academic goal, and I don't feel like going back is the solution. What motivates me these days is learning new things and finding art and music, and when doing that I'm totally happy. I don't think I need very much just to be content, but finding a life that feels like my own is still a problem.

i don't quite know how to answer this question because i feel like it's not formulated for my situation but an honest answer would mean turning it around properly in a way i am reluctant to tangle with at the moment.

essentially i have not (just shy of 40) given up my dreams which more or less resemble the ones i have had since i was a teenager; but i should have realized them more by now and the gradual dissipation/emptying out of them in light of the extent to which i have arguably so far realized them seems to kind of be making me wish i could give up on them. but if i gave up on them i would not have anything, so i can't do that.

a couple years ago i read a story, in the newspaper, about a homeless-transitioning accommodation in town, the kind of place that tries to set people up in assisted living, stabilizes them, etc. with the hopes of working steadily and gradually becoming independent again. one guy had worked as a dishwasher, liked it fine, was doing okay, but a car accident left him with chronic pain and then pain management and addiction problems that hampered his ability to work and then left him intermittently employed, homeless, in and out of stability, for ten years, before this point when he was just about ready to get a place of his own. i was struck by this because it was about how long my post-grad school period of fluctuating unemployment and underemployment and unhappiness had about stretched, and that seemed to nullify any differences between me and the guy. my feeling was: yes, people think it's some big thing, an exception, to have your life fall apart, but they can glide along so easily in theirs that they can't appreciate how a person could be stuck for ten years, that the impossibility of changing your life could become so terribly permanent, for essentially no different reason, just being borne along by life.

i persist in my dreams for myself but also, it seems, just to be able to prove to others, to someone else, that i'm not nothing. that those years weren't nothing.

My only real dream was to not depend on or have to listen to my parents.
― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:03 (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly!! my parents or anyone.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 14 October 2017 11:05 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sometimes I feel like this particular dream probably turned out to be the hardest to fully realize.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Saturday, October 14, 2017 1:13 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes and i totally relate. lol. we are genetically tied to our parents, we ARE our parents.

it is the inescapable lottery of life. everyone has their own inhereted business to deal with, their own genetic history, the socio-biological circumstances they didn't ask for.

when we are young we have these fixations, we are just getting used to the world, to the social and physical realm. often we are programmed to attach to certain symbols or systems in response to the symbolic language of capitalism. there are society-imposed goals like getting married, starting a family, or owning a house. Social Dreams? like being rich or being famous as an end goal, it seems like a dead end, something naive and simplistic, not really providing any peace but attracting all number of Psychic Vampires and power hungry creeps. imo material wealth past the point of necessity is an illusion and a trap to the addictive personality (which could be anyone, again, lottery of birth)

imo it is best to think of life as a waking dream, a web always spinning itself. this is certainly true, we play many roles over the course of our lives, our consciousness is ever-changing, physiology and biology adapting to our ever-changing environments. friend and family die, scenes fade out, people move away, our experience of the world is ever-shifting, slices of continuity, events that we experience through our senses and reflect upon later. in this way life is like a dream, in which we also see, feel, hear. we are of the universe and the universe was set in motion before we came to be. thus we are caught up in the trajectory of things, the motion that pulls us along. this is the dream of the universe itself.

We are not our parents

i'm not anybody's parents, thank christ

My dreams were a lot of things ... in high school it was bizarre experimental filmmaker, bizarre experimental musician, bizarre experimental comedian... those dreams I can probably do whenever since there'll never be much of an audience for that stuff. Door's always open, I guess.

In middle school, I was a utopian idealistic, and I wanted to be a revolutionary who brought empathy and compassion society... to create a perfectly engineered world based on systems theory and secular humanism. Having had brushes with power, that's not a dream I'd really like to pursue for my own well-being, I've faced enough bullshit in my life. I can always volunteer, become a mentor, do pro bono work for deserving clients. So in a way that door is still open, too...

Another dream was to create my own little business empire. I'm currently working for a brilliant entrepreneur and quickly rising through the ranks, and he's taken me under his wing, and I'm learning some good shit, so perhaps I can still do that if/when I decide to go out on my own...

I'm 34 now. My greatest dream was to have a loving family, but I'm such a mutant and fuck up that I'm not sure that'll ever be possible.

You could always pursue the dream of creating bizarre experimental Facebook macros and having them go viral.

(long; skip if you choose)

So almost exactly 34 years ago — i.e. sometime in late 1983 — I got my first piece published in NME (a live review of One the Juggler at the Marquee lol) (they were bad not good). And a few weeks back, I had a nudge on facebook that K was leaving NME, after 34 years on the admin staff, and her leaving party is at ____ on ____. K, a kind, lovely woman who everyone adored and continues to adore, is certainly the last left of those on staff when I was beginning, which means she’d survived through every change and tribulation, every editor good and bad since the early 80s. So of course I went along — we hadn’t been entirely out of touch, courtesy Facebook, and it seemed important to go along and be part of the celebratory throng.

From my mid-teens in the 70s, all I’d wanted in life was to write for the NME. Its writers had inspired me, its mischief had shaped me: its goals — as I interpreted them — were my goals. So I had been thrilled to have been taken on, provisionally, as a freelancer. I’d completed my time at university with more than half a mind on ending up here (my degree, maths and philosophy, couldn’t have been less relevant). This was my dream, and — honestly — all of my dream.

I’ll say more about the goals another time — but what followed, at this realisation of my intense one-and-only teenage dream, was (of course) five years of bafflement, frustration and upset, which really only a kind of boneheaded stubbornness got me through. First, I couldn’t seem to get purchase in this world, to master what it took to be admired or fast-tracked by editors, to be assigned the kind of work I wanted. Second, which is related but subtly different, I couldn’t see the link between the world I encountered in the office, and what came out the other end — the rivalries and feuds and pettiness in what you might call the outer chambers could be alchemised into something that still, somehow (though less and less as time went on), aligned with my still-undescribed goals. Third, I couldn’t see what might be good in my writing as distinct from everything that still wasn’t: and I hugely resented people whose writing I didn’t think much of getting much more work than me (which in retrospect they probably deserved — some of them). Even more I resented editors not seeing past my manifold surface flaws and tongue-tied self-presentation to recognise the genius that had certainly not at that time in any sense flowered.

But I should straight away note that I made several friends who are still friends, and met people who never quite became friends that I retain very fond memories of: some people who in the local caffs could tell a story that made you laugh until your face hurt (but never seemed to choose to transfer this into their prose), and others who were funny off and on the page. Also people who were sly, people who were impossible, people who were idiots — and people like K, who are just lovely. And I filled myself into the faction — bcz so faction, very feud, ugh — that went off to run The Wire, where eventually I would become editor and change the world that way *sigh*

By no means all the factions were represented at K’s party: I was the only Wire-type person really. The shock of it — jumping back 30 years, which can change people a lot, their looks and their memories — threw me back not even to my 1988 self, when I stalked out of the paper on a point of semi-confected principle (story elsewhere: it relates to U2), but almost to my timid 1983 self. I don’t think of myself as courageous or driven but back in the early 80s I really did shoulder past a lot of strong hints that I didn’t belong and wasn’t much good (I wasn’t much good; I got much better). True, I wasn’t afraid of anyone anymore — I’ve been an editor myself, I’ve watched other careers rise and stall, I strongly feel I’m at my best and happiest and most fulfilled right now, really… which I suspect isn’t the tale some of my former on-it faster-track foes are telling themselves. Though to be fair most people there seemed content enough — and some of them also seemed very very old.

My dream as a small kid was that I wanted to be a writer. We had a family friend who was an author and translator and her (big tall) Shrewsbury townhouse was jampacked with books, floor to ceiling, every floor of I think five! I love the look and feel of this, and her frown and focus as she typed, cigarette in mouth (she lived to a great age but of course died of cancer).

I did ok with some teachers writing, but quite badly with others. It wasn’t till I was a teen that I found a subject: it was to be punk rock! Or anyway, as years passed and thrill of that moment turned very complex, it was to be music as a whole. And at the age of 23 I found I’d arrived through the door of being allowed to do this, somewhat conditionally: except what I found inside was exactly not my kind of social space, London media-club writ small despite its countercultural origins, and (with excellent moments and a few achievements I’m still pleased with) I underwent something like a decade of mild trauma that I mostly refused to face and entirely refused to vocalise. Culminating when I lost my job as Wire editor through a combo of creative exhaustion and being (temporarily) out of step with the plans of the then-owners (who went in quite another direction shortly after they’d fired me, allowing my successors to buy them out and steer it wherever they chose (including into profit).

Today I think all this did me more good than bad — because it forced me from my mid-30s on to spend a *LOT* of time bruisedly taking stock of what I wanted to do and what I was no longer prepared to do. But for several years I just retreated into a shell and did little more than spend time with my ill and ageing parents and correct other people’s spelling. In many ways early ilx is what brought me back to myself: in a weird way it was what university should have been — sitting up late talking garbage about trash with likeminded ppl from many different kinds of background, many of whom I remain excellent friends with on and off the boards — and realising there were written approaches I was unexpectedly good at that I wasn’t really using professional, which the internet very much valorised (if not to the extent of paying for them, obviously).

So the cumulative crash of my teenage dreams really did eventually allow me to live in a small flat full of books floor-to-ceiling, typing away most days. No cigarette though: I plan to outlive her.

*applause*

honestly if book-length autibiographies were this good or this honest i might read a couple

weird thing is I've used my 30s to achieve some of the dreams I let slip by in my 20s.

feel like at times I'm in a mad dash to accomplish a lot before 40 and that I'm in a pre-midlife crisis atm.

also have started to erode away my 'corporate' persona and give my antiseptic business colleagues a taste of who I really am for the first time in pretty much 13 years. Years after I "sold out".

do I respect myself? some days. some not.

at least I can afford to drink when I don't!

I feel three chess moves away from quitting my well-paying job to like, be a roadie for a third-tier black metal band and live out of a van on the road.

recently, my only dream was to get through that long-ass mark s. post and i did it! i read the whole thing! i can die happy now.

totally stealing this too:

"sitting up late talking garbage about trash"

I’ve managed to downsize my dream of making a graphic novel to an epic, award-winning, children’s book. Being a creative-dreamer-type person, I can’t ever not dream. I haven’t started my damn book yet but my new job has lull hours. Once I buy a laptop and I’ll be ready to start!

I get inspiration from ‘American Splendor’ - a movie about underground cartoonist, Harvey Pekar. I like how he got his start while he was working some stupid office job. I like how he met his dorky, artsy girlfriend (and wife) just after gaining little bit of fame. These things help me keep on dreaming big.

dreaming was always the objective. I realised early that it was the best part, that no reality could match the exhilaration of your brain speeding through ideas to draw a scene for you. I learned to quickly let go of each dream so it wouldn't get in the way of the next. my friends complained I had all these great ideas I never followed through, but they always loved to hear the next one, even long after they gave up trying to make me realise them. once the internet arrived, that sealed the deal

after years of toil I have realised my dream to be unemployed and crippled by negative thinking in the so-called prime of my life

all my dreams were negative. i dreamt of not going to school & church, not having to see relatives or make small talk, not living in the suburbs, not having to leave my room, not having to be frugal, not having to listen, not having to be seen. got my wishes. but no time to stop dreaming

i wanted to be a spy when i was 9-11 or so but then stopped thinking about it, although i do think i'd have been good at it

This is an interesting question.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a famous actor/musician. I kept this dream going in my head right up until high school, when I looked at the entertainment industry and what I could bring to it as a barely-trained bass-baritone uninterested in a career as a classical soloist and thought "I am never going to be anyone's lead singer and I can't really play an instrument and I've never really studied acting; how am I going to get into this insanely competitive field and succeed enough to make a living?" This was also right as software was becoming the Hot New Industry and just before the internet took off and created a new job market. I decided to keep my performance dreams as a hobby and go after software as a career as it would give me enough money and vacation time to pursue my artistic interests under much lower pressure, since I wouldn't need to perform to support myself. As luck would have it, I ended up joining some amazing groups that led to paid work on the opera stage, scratching both the singing and acting itch, and collaboration in the indie rock world that got me credits on two albums that debuted in the Billboard Top 100. I also got to travel abroad on five different choir trips, sang for several years with the BSO and the Boston Pops (including a bunch of televised holiday performances where the camera literally sat in my lap and I got a ton of screen time), and have been singing in a professional church choir for the past 15 years. I'm not world-famous and I'm not insanely wealthy but I am very, very happy. My only regret is not realizing much earlier in life that my voice was actually decent raw material and spending money on shaping it; I don't know that I would be famous if I'd done regular, serious voice study as opposed to sporadic bursts but I probably wouldn't have hobbled my vocal range and could conceivably had tried to do more solo musical theater/classical things as opposed to thinking I could only be an ensemble member. (Don't get me wrong; I love being in ensembles. As I've gotten older and gotten more opportunity to work on solo rep, and gotten massively positive feedback on solos I've done from an admittedly friendly audience, I have definitely wondered what I would sound like or be doing had I gotten more serious earlier, or studied with some of the bigger voice teachers around town. At a minimum, I'd probably be a much bigger asset to my current ensembles.)