coffee for the apocalypse

There are many kinds of people in the world. More than you or I can imagine. That’s cool, we need diversity to keep things rolling. Believers and nonbelievers (in many different things), the optimists and the pessimists, the dreamers and the “realists”.

I am a dreamer, always have been. I wasn’t born with a natural shame about my own state of being in the world. Slowly through the years I took on the expectations and naysayings of the “realists” around me. From more than one adult in my life who told me that I was like my mother who “never finished anything” to the partner who watched me sit, a teenaged mother with a love for music, dreaming about being invited to the Grammys one day only to scoff “That’s never gonna happen”. I internalized it.

Other people… but not you. Lucky people. Talented people. Smart people. People worth a shit.

I put my guitar away and stopped writing songs for twenty fucking years.
Two god damned decades.

I have written at least eight novels and most of them I continue to edit into the ground until I’m cross eyed. Are they good enough? Is every single comma in the right place? Did this word make sense or should I describe more? I showed one to someone close to me and asked them to read it. The high of my first completed book buzzing in my bones. The only feedback I got was “I’m not into romance in books”. Well, okay then… I didn’t share any more.

I have been an artist (painting, fabric, drawing etc) since I was a young teen but the mantra of “Art isn’t a real career” echoed through my head over and over until I picked my own pieces apart and left them to collect dust in the closet, chucked into a dumpster when we moved at some point or another.

I don’t wish to wax poetic about how parenthood teaches you so much but in this case it’s real, at least for me. Watching the young people I have worked to hard to instill confidence in wilting under the same types of “realism” that I did not only hurts my heart… it pisses me the fuck off.

Not to toot my own horn but one of my kids has a natural talent from music and has been told by professionals that their voice is good enough to get places. The “realist” has already begun the process of declaring that creative pursuits are not careers and that college is the only choice.

I sneak into the kid’s room and give hugs, whispered reassurances, and pep talks in the car to and from school. I refuse to let them fold their dream up and shove it to the back of the drawer just because someone else said it wasn’t worthwhile.

It’s okay to have opinions and to encourage stable careers for your kids but if it’s at the cost of their own belief in themselves, you’re doing it wrong.

Of *those* “realists” I say … fuck ’em.