20 somethings

For the most part, we are bunch of dreamers. Fresh out of college only leaves you with a world of opportunities…especially if you’re single. No place is off limits unless we put those limits on ourselves. If you want to be the owner of a Fortune 500 company or a ‘starving’ gypsy artist in Austin you could make it happen.
But just dreaming about some life we want won’t get us anywhere. If I was ever asked to “share my vast wisdom” with the youth of America that would be it. Don’t live life through an imagination in your head. I always dreamed of power suits, Blackberrys and high rise offices. But I didn’t actually do anything to get me there.
Why? Because I was content being the boss of my fantasy. Trust me. It didn’t take Fantasy Valerie long to get to the top. It may have started as a summer internship but a few blinks of an eye later and I was Editor in Chief of the most prestigious magazine. I had my own assistant, a loft apartment and took weekend trips to the Hamptons.
And then I woke up to find myself where I really was, receiving a diploma for four years of hardwork, that in most fields wouldn’t count as the “experience” needed for most of my dream jobs. So I have since modified my dream. I realize now those fantasies only let me get more and more outrageous. My pet penguin Victorino would never survive in my run of the mill Lafayette apartment. And very few nights out here include a red carpet.
Don’t get me wrong I want to dream big but I don’t want to leave it there or dream big about the wrong things. How many people reach all there so-called dreams only to be lonely and tired? I needed to reprioritize what was important. Those little things like a Blackberry and powersuit only represented what I really wanted: to be a respected writer.
And so I made a new list. Here’s what I came up with. I want to be a successful writer, wife and mother, who spends her evenings with good friends. Someone who at the very least has speaker phone on her cell with a wardrobe including the most comfortable Ragin’ Cajun sweatshirt for days off in lieu of a power suit. And I don’t have to have a pet penguin I suppose. They probably wouldn’t be nearly as cuddly as the T-cup Maltese, Sicily, that nuzzles my neck every morning. And in the real world my little Civic with a sunroof couldn’t make me happier. This whole achieving dreams thing isn’t so hard once I realize some dreams were happening before my very eyes. And once I achieve the successful writing thing maybe I will challenge myself again and reconsider the power suits and Blackberry.
So, Reality Valerie just fired Fantasy Valerie. But don’t feel bad for her. She just got a job as poet laureate of the United States moonlighting as a Philadelphia Phillies reporter, and I hear she is pretty happy.