How much money does it take to sell your dreams?

I've been sitting at my desk since 6am answering the same phone with the same greeting.

"Hello, and thank you for calling Volvo. How may I direct your call?"

And as I push every button on the switchboard, page every "important person", and tell every customer to "hold, please," I keep thinking that I can't do this forever. Live someone else's dream. I need to do something productive and worthwhile to me.

I need to keep creating.

Living.

Breathing in color.

Luckily, I'm not trapped yet. I have a few years of college ahead of me and this job is only a menial, part-time thing. But so many people are backed into corners. So many people settle for less because they don't want to push themselves and do the hard work to get where they need to go. Sure, a lot of people wake up when they're 50 years old and say, "Yeah, my life turned out good." But how many people get to wake up and can look back and say, "Wow, my life was fucking awesome,"? How many people get to look forward to going to work? How many people kiss their wives or husbands of 20 years the way they did when they were newlyweds?

My dad is the smartest man I know, but he spends his days doing finances in a cubicle as a car sales manager. He works long hours, mostly 9-9s, and is always tired when he comes home. He watches some TV before bed and then wakes up and does it all again. He makes good money and has always provided for my mom and us. But does he love it? No. What he does love is political science. He went to law school, but some time after college someone offered him a job crunching numbers and he took it because it wasn't a risk.

I will always choose passion over security.

My magazine journalism degree can only get me so far, I'm told. My professors say things like, "Oh, it'd be easy to write for Men's Health or Women's Day or Parenting Magazine." Yeah, but who wants that? Who says "easy" is the best way to go? I'll be damned if I use my intelligence for something I know it wasn't made for. I'm going big. I'm going to write books and poems and letters. I'm going to meet as many people as I can and go everywhere I get the chance to travel. I will never settle for "good enough", "content", or any of the other bullshit people feed you to make you feel like did something great when you didn't.

I want to love my job. I want to write books and earn a name for myself. I want to learn high-fashion makeup and how to give a good massage. I want to take bartending classes. I want to go to the Amazon for a year and take care of orphaned gorillas. I want to live in California for at least a year. I want to learn and experience everything I can.

I want to kiss and smile and breathe and run and sleep knowing that I'm doing the best I can.

My dreams are varied and so many people have told me at least one or another is stupid. But I'm not doing it for YOU. I'm doing it for me. Call me naive, stupid, whatever you want. But take a look at yourself before your point fingers. If you're not striving to be your best, too, I feel sorry for you.