It's My World, And I'm Taking It

So, I recently started a new job working at Vivint (which is fantastic, btw.  They give you free lunches, their burgers are from grass-fed cows so they're cruelty-free, 2-3 fifteen minute breaks, and they have a sand volleyball court and exercise equipment).  In training, we'll have guests come in to speak with us about certain aspects of the job.

Yesterday, a guy named Levi came in to speak with us.  He's half black, half Tongan, and 100% amazing.  He asked us to share our dreams with him, our future careers.  He said we need to beat fear if we want to succeed, we need to share our dreams with people who we trust and who will support us.  We need people who will talk us out of our fears and help us take our dreams.  We need to write our dreams down.

There was a kid in a training class Levi told us about.  He wanted to be a writer.  He didn't write consistently, and he only wrote in short bursts.  There was another boy, in a different training class.  Levi asked him how often he wrote.  "I write for six hours, every day."  The training class was floored by his answer.  Six hours?  How could anybody write for six hours every single day?  "When I get stuck, I start a new story, and a new story, and then I go back to an older story and continue on from there."  Levi asked if he could read something of what the kid wrote, and it was fantastic.  He talked to the kid more and learned that it was his dream to meet with Brandon Sanderson.  Levi knew a girl who worked for Brandon Sanderson as a TA, and called to see if the kid could meet with him.  The girl said he was busy and didn't have time to meet him.  But one day, about six months later, the girl called back saying she'd mentioned it in passing, and Brandon was excited to meet with him.  So Levi asked the kid what he'd do if Brandon Sanderson wanted to have lunch with him later that day.  The kid said he'd love to, but when he realized Levi was serious, he began to come up with excuses.  His manager wouldn't let him leave, he couldn't leave Vivint, his loyalty to the company would be questions.  Levi talked his fears down, and the kid met with Brandon.  It was amazing, the kid said, Brandon read some of what he'd written and was introducing the kid to his publisher to sign a contract.

I want to work at a zoo.  I want to be a zoo keeper.  And I realized I had fears that I was allowing to get in the way of me and my dream.  I was letting the distance to the zoo be a barrier.  I was allowing lack of money to be a barrier.  I was allowing the lack of trainers to be a barrier.  I was letting the expiration of my TB (tuberculosis) test to be a barrier.  I was allowing my two part-time jobs to be a barrier.

My determination is carrying me through, though.  I got the TB shot yesterday, and it just needs to be checked tomorrow.  I'm going to the zoo this Saturday to clean up the animal resource center where our handling animals live.  I will see the new exhibit and set up some training dates so that I can get my Animal Handler's permit and be a handler on my own.  If I have a free day that a trainer can't work with me on, I'm going to go up to the zoo to be a regular volunteer with biofacts.  I won't let my fears get in my way.  Summer isn't an excuse to slack off.  I'm reviewing my biology textbook and reading the second half of it that's covered this fall in my 1620 class.  I'm going to stop wasting my time on Facebook and Netflix.

I'm going to focus EVERYTHING on my dream.  Levi spoke a lot more to us yesterday, but I'll leave you with his motto, now my motto.  'This world belongs to me.  Everything in it is for my success or my failure.  This world is mine.'

What's your dream?  What are you doing to get there?  Start now.  Don't stop.


~CrimsonRuin