Once Upon A Time.

Once upon a time you were able to DREAM BIG...

Your imaginations would run endless and equated to the number of stars in the sky. When you were younger you could be anything you wanted with a flick of the wrist. They made it seem so easy- your parents, your teachers, your friends. If you wanted to be an astronaut, all you had to do was dream. As you grow older those same vivid dreams you once had turn to grey and become less fantasy and more realistic. Sometimes I believe that the only magic in this world exists at Disneyland, but the people that work there must think otherwise.
Now you have to not only dream but goal-orient yourself, see yourself in that said position, think of the pros and more importantly the cons that could possibly make you HATE your life, you have to think about your family now and what it will become, or won't!, you have to think about your personality and if it fits, you have to think about paying the bills with your dream everyday.
It's easy to see how my first dreams of being an author became obsolete- long middle-of-the-night hours and a life filled with caffeine addiction, writer's block and complete silence with a twist of carpel tunnel.
Nowadays and everyone knows, I want to be able to cut open a heart and see what's inside, I want to watch the radical cells from a tumor in a microscope burst and die from a concoction I created, i want to whip-stitch a banana! But no one told me that it was going to be this difficult back when I was dreaming so big! Organic Chemistry, millions of molecules, memorizing phyla after phyla, where do the protists go? I just have to stop being lazy and think. Until one day I realized what my life would become if I miraculously accomplish this feat.
In Biology, we study other people's studies. We see what others in the scientific community have done and continue to do. In the end, we become that community and begin to do things that may lead to failure upon failure or a breakthrough that someone will teach a BIOL 221 class some day in order to encourage and inspire and keep the cycle going. For most, that's what these class examples do- they create brain juice for us to feed off. But my reality kicked it. I don't necessarily want to apply creativity into making and conducting countless experiments until I reach a breakthrough. I'm messy in the lab, i spill constantly, my technique is off and I never recover the right amount of sample. The scientific community is COMPETITIVE forever and I'm realizing that I possibly make not have what it takes to make it but also may not want to WORK THAT HARD to getting to that whip-stitched banana.
Am I settling for less? No. I'm choosing other things in place of those sutured bananas. Because life isn't about BIG DREAMS it's about reality and balance. It's about making choices to sort out things that work for you and things that work against you. I love babies. That's what I want ultimately- a beautiful family. That is the final measure of my success. The career is the vehicle that materially brings us into the promised (and comfortable living) land of those La Jolla Beach Front properties. But as Keisha said, "I don't want to spend more time with other kids than I do with my own." And that's the sad truth behind most of these ambitious career positions- grueling, long hard man hours and a lot of frozen dinners in front of the television. No bueno.

So what else is out there? Where is the happy medium? We can't all just become teachers and get the weekends off to grade papers. The salary isn't going to buy me a house any time soon. And the lack of a challenge will drive me insane. So there's the balance I need to find- An Ambitious and Growing Interest Career Position + A Growing Beautiful Comfortable Family.

Because after all those bananas become real humans stitches, that pager isn't going to let you see the light of day. After determining the ways 1,000 different bodies died, I'll refuse to let anyone leave the house and live forever in the depths of fear. And after preforming the same experiment over and over again, when do you realize it 's finally time to hang your hat, make for the coast because the war is over and you've been defeated by the dreams you held so dear, once upon a time....

I told my mom when I was 16 years old, I wanted to be an astronaut and go to space. She said No. And I thank her because she was being realistic. P.S. I'm not backing down. As a Capricorn, I'll stay ambitious. I'm never going to accept defeat especially for the sake of raising a family (that's what grandparents are for). I'm simply writing this blog to re-evaluate the needs and wants of my life. The modes of how I'm going to get what I want and finding out exactly what that "want" really truly is. Determining how far down to Hell I'll go to grab a piece of this world for my own. Because ultimately my name is going in a book. And hopefully I'll grab a Nobel Prize with it.

The war isn't over. I just realized I need to either buy bigger & better gun or go hang a tail between my legs.
Go Hard or Go Home, world.