Do You Have Dreams To Remember?

   You know normally I save rants like this for my other Blog Head Trash and may post it there too. I hadn't planned on writing anything else other than the next chapter for Hell, Heaven, and Earth In A Week. However, sometimes you see something that really gets at you, Something that really hits a nerve and you just got to put it down. I go to alot of places and in the last few years i consider myself pretty social. I can't tell you how many times I've sit at a bar and listened to young people bitch about where they are in life. How North Alabama has nothing to do(which it doesn't). They are going to go somewhere else and they want out of here bad. I go away for a few weeks teaching or doing security stuff and I come back. The same people are at the same bar bitching yet they never seem to do anything about it.
   You know we all have dreams. I was born in a very small town and swore that I wouldn't die there. Somewhere along the way I forgot about that promise. I got a job at a company and worked my way up to team leader and had 45 people working under me. After 6 years it wasn't enough I was miserable. So I moved out of management and got a job for another company as a technician(I actually went to college for electronics). I did that 4 years and the change was nice but then I wasn't happy there either. I got called into the office one day in Birmingham,AL and got wrote up for something stupid that was a judgement call. It wasn't that it was something really bad I used to be a manager I knew what was happening. We'd just gotten a new manager in and he wanted to exert some authority over the people to keep them in line and basically have a show of force from the beginning(he wrote up most off us for silly stuff, not just me). I thought to myself ....wow this is really dumb. That is just going to make people hate him and won't fix anything. Then I remembered an old song by Otis Redding. It was called....I've Got Dreams To Remember. The phrase stuck in my head and I thought about it alot. Then I remembered my own dreams. I had talent, drive,ambition, and I don't have to take this shit. I could've stayed with Canon for the rest of my life and lived fairly comfortable. I never would've had anything too nice but I wouldn't have had anything bad either it would be safe. That however, wasn't my dream and it wasn't going to keep me happy. I felt like if I could put the time into my goals and went for it that nothing could stop me.
    I walked away from that job and it was a scary thing. I had some money stashed away that would last a little while but not forever only awhile. I went to work right away on a seminar in Houston, TX. It was a bad time of year to do it but it was going to be ok. Then I picked up a security job for the rest of the year and would get to travel and it filled in the gaps. I'd get to see places I'd never seen. I'd fit seminars in for the rest of the year where i could and book like crazy for next year. Sure it was hard to risk everything not knowing the outcome but I believed in myself and what I was doing. I remembered my dream and now I work to keep them my reality.
   Because of this I have no sympathy for the whiner at the end of the bar that doesn't do anything. If you don't like your life then do something about it. If your not going to do something about it then shut your mouth. There's a few different classes of these whiners and I want people to recognize them because they will waste your time and keep you from your own dreams. They are pitfalls on your journey. Don't let them make their problem your problem. While it's pretty sad and as good people we want to help everyone but some refuse to be helped.
   Some of them are just trash talkers. You generally here them talking about how they are going to do stuff and they are hustlers and all this junk. Some of them even have the nuts to try to give you advice. However when you look at them closely these are the same people that always borrow money and never pay it back. They never pay any bills on time. You can't visit them without having to run some errand for them because they can't do it for themselves. They are never going to accomplish anything because they are lazy and only half ass everything always looking for that short cut to get something for nothing. These people are users and eventually alienate everyone and end up living with their parents. If you want something in life your going to have to bust your ass for it or it probably is something fleeting that isn't really worth having in the first place.
The exception in this case may be women who screw their way to the top and marry a rich guy. Now true they'll have alot of crap but in the end they are nothing more than a nobody married to a somebody. They will however happily use you on they way up there because using you is easier than actually working for it. Learn to recognize them and stay away from them.
     Another example of this phenomenon are the cowards who hide their fear with arrogance. These are the popular people around town but the problem is they are only popular in town. Anywhere else they aren't squat. Trust me I've been to the town of Anywhere in the great state of Else and they never heard of them there. There's an old saying I think it's chinese but I'm not sure but it goes like this:

The biggest fish in the pond sometimes forgets about the whales in the ocean

   This describes these people perfectly. They rather stay where they are and live a life of regret and be that small fish in the pond than leave and be nobody somewhere else and have to start over. Even if you offered them the opportunity they'd come up with some flaky excuse why they couldn't do it or demean the opportunity and blow it off not taking it seriously because they are cowards deep down. I've wasted alot of time on this type of person that talks a big game but in the end they got no guts. They may remember their dreams but they will never realize them not unless they can find a heart somewhere. Life is hard and nothing good comes easy.

   Now I want to digress for a moment. Now I've used some harsh wording in this article out of anger but these types deserve it and maybe it could even wake some of them up if they ever heard it. I do want to say that everybody is somebody because someone loves them. My father worked in a factory his whole life and my mother was a teacher. They are definitely important and somebody to me. I worked in factories most of my life too and it was an honest living and respectable. Everyone is somebody but sometimes people need a wake up call and that's what this is about. We live in the greatest country in the world because it was built by people that didn't talk shit they did shit. So many young people today are too soft. They don't want to work for anything. Why would I pay this bill if mom will always pay it? Why would I train hard for a cert in combatives when i can pay my money at the dojo down the road and get a black belt just for showing up every week. That has become the norm these days and it's disgusting. Our parents worked hard their whole lives so we could have something more. They worked so we could have a better life not sit on our asses and bleed off other people. I for one decided a long time ago that my parents weren't going to work for nothing. That they were going to be successful and it was going to pay off because I was going to work to make it so or die trying.

    Now if your happy where you are and you are fulfilled then I'm happy for you and wish you all the best I hope it continues. I wish you and your families all the luck in the world. However if you aren't happy don't be afraid to do something about it and make a change. In the end it could even turn to resentment and make you a not very nice person to be around. I you aren't happy where you are don't be a bystander in your own life. You need to have the guts to do something about it. I want to ask you one more question before I go

Do you have dreams to remember?