Are people who follow their dreams a bit out to lunch?

[AcGold]

Follow your dreams while also working. It's easier to follow a dream if you have a safety net, my dream is to be in a successful band. The odds are about 0% so I have multiple jobs to support myself and am looking for a career path that won't destroy my soul, working a job doesn't mean giving up on your dreams. If you're going to write a screenplay write it and get a job that provides money for food and shelter. It's fun to dream because it keeps the imagination working.

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Russic

I've personally always dialled "do what you love" back to "don't do what you hate". If you wake up every morning and wish for nothing more than the day to be nearly over, I'd flag that as a serious problem. Perhaps the solution isn't to quit your job and backpack through Laos, but rather to just find a different fit in your chosen industry.

This here sums up my life experience as well.

You don't have to *love* your job, but life is too short to spend doing something you hate. If you wake up every morning (or worse yet, don't sleep at all) with the weight of the world on your shoulders, it's time for a change.

But the flip side of this is that you don't have to experience bliss in every waking moment. There's a balancing point.

A few years back I took a decent (20%ish) paycut to find a better fit within my industry. Haven't regretted it at all. And best of all, I can sleep at night.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by jaydorn

A few years back I took a decent (20%ish) paycut to find a better fit within my industry. Haven't regretted it at all. And best of all, I can sleep at night.

I did the exact same.


I can remember coming home from work and my wife telling me to either get a new job or a new family. She was done with how much I worked and how much of a grumpy #### I was from the work.


The change has made a huge impact in our life.

[icecube]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Pulp Fiction was written in 6 weeks.

It was the 4th full length script Tarantino had written at the time.

Yeah i can believe Quentin Tarantino can bang out a genius script in under two months because Screenwriting and film in general is his whole life's purpose.

Im just saying that Joe Shmoe will find that writing an actual good screenplay (that someone wouldn't throw in the trash after twenty five pages in) is waaaaay harder than the average person thinks. There is so much that goes into it.

If it was as easy to write a good screenplay as some people on here make it sound, then we'd be seeing better movies. Who wouldn't want to sit down and write a spec script in three months and sell it for six figures? Then after you've sold your spec, the assignments come and then you are really making the big bucks.

If it was that easy everyone would be doing it. The fact is 95 percent of the stuff that gets sent in is unreadable crap. If you are a good writer your stuff will be discovered and you will get your foot in the door. Whether your spec gets produced or not is another story.

A story like Stallone and Rocky is a one in a million shot. 99 percent of hollywood writers grinded out crap for years until they mastered screenwriting. They got professional level feedback and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote.

[icecube]

I will add that, yeah after six years you should have more than one script and you should have an idea of whether or not you have what it takes. You should definitely also have some contacts at that point.

[Itse]

There's an animated series (Pasila) in Finland which actually put this very well a couple of years back in one episde. The main character was trying to write a book, and was harassing an established writer for tips because he could never get anything done. Finally the writer broke and put it something this.

"You don't want to write. You want to be a guy that has written a book."

That's the problem with a lot of dreamers. They dream of being a movie star, or a writer, or a hockey player, or a rock star. They dream of being something instead of doing something.

If you really want to write, you'll write, a lot. If you really want to be a writer, you'll dream about being a writer a lot. The guy in the OP is the latter type.

[Mr.Coffee]

No one way to live life

[fatso]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Because it's untrue and everybody knows fatso is a non-contributing zero?

Originally Posted by Sliver

Well he has started exactly zero threads in his whole time on CP, yet he has plenty of helpful tips, tricks and criticisms of my posts and threads. If he was even once able to start an interesting conversation, I'd be happy to change my opinion, but until then I think I'm right.

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Is it cuz he's a ginger?

Originally Posted by Sliver

I didn't know he was, but it's not helping his case.

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Neither did I.

Neither did I!

In all seriousness though, I do not know the process for obtaining a custom user title, but I'd love for the mods to hook me up with a 'ginger, non-contributing zero' one. Given his apparent understanding of "interesting conversation" and "contributing", if moon-lite thinks your posts haven't contributed anything then you're probably doing something right. As a CP poster, to obtain a distinction of this nature is - and call me out to lunch - my dream.

[ExiledFlamesFan]

Follow your dreams

[AcGold]

Tobias could have if he just kept his dayjob

[Winsor_Pilates]

I am both equally annoyed by the "I'm following my dreams without any plan" crowd, and the "I'm working 9-5, and want my validation by shooting down the dreamers" crowd.

Both are looking for validation by not being the other; instead of working to be what they want to be.

Following your dreams is not about quitting reality and coasting to some utopia of lazy freedom. It's about working really damn hard, but doing it in a venture that's internally fulfilling and having an achievable skill set and roadmap to get there.

I would rephrase the thread title to "Are people who create their dreams a bit out to lunch?", and the answer is certainly no.