Jesse and I spent this past weekend with my family celebrating my sister’s high school graduation.
Words truly can’t describe how incredibly proud we are of her.
We had a great weekend catching up with family, cleaning the house for the reception ;) and celebrating the beautiful woman (inside and out) my sister has become.
Oh, and I definitely didn’t keep that promise about not crying at the ceremony…I lost it early on…
*****
As with most high school graduation ceremonies, there were student speakers – 5 for this particular night.
And if you’ve ever been to a high school graduation (after your own), you know exactly how cheesy those speeches are. “The future is yours to hold…You can do anything you set your mind to…Go out and make all your dreams come true…” and so on.
As I sat in the audience listening to those corny speeches (I was one of those cheeseballs 5 years ago, mind you), I couldn’t help but drift off and think about my own life and how it’s changed since I graduated high school.
I’m not happy doing the work I’m doing right now, but I know what it is I want to be doing “for a living.” I’m not doing it yet, but I’m hoping I will be sooner than later.
Are the people around me thinking the same thing? Is that 40-year-old woman still saying that she hopes to do what she loves some day? Is that grandfather thinking about how much he wishes he would’ve tried a little harder to make his dreams come true?
I don’t know if any of those people were thinking those things, but I decided right there in that gym that I did not want to find myself, years and years from now, sitting at a graduation, listening to how “dreams really can come true” but thinking about how wrong that is and that life just doesn’t work that way.
Because you know what? I think it does. I think life really is about all of those cliches. Isn’t it too damn short for it not to be?!
I don’t absolutely love the work I’m doing right now, and in just 2 days, I’ll be finished with it…In just 2 days, I get to start chasing after the dreams I have….I get to follow through on the things I learned at an amazing meeting I had with a professional in this new field last night…I get to truly start chasing my dreams…
Things won’t happen overnight. Heck, I don’t even know if they’ll happen in a year or two. But my gosh, I’m determined to make them happen no matter how long it may take me. I’m determined to do what I love and work in a field I’m truly passionate about.
Maybe the future really is mine to create….
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