From a Dreamer's Heart

I've been thinking a lot lately about what kind of life I want to lead; not necessarily about who I want to be, I know who I want to be: kind, courteous, driven, responsible.  But in other senses of what shape I want my life to take, I'm finding every year that I get older that the ideas of the life I wanted, the career I wanted are changing.

I've always felt more European than American in my views of traveling, in working to live instead of living to work.  And I feel like I'm moving more and more in that direction as I get older and learn more about the world.  When I'm booking these trips, and the dollar signs are growing, I always feel like that money is best spent money that I spend in my life.  It's more important to me than a big house or the clothes in my closet, that money spent on traveling is what makes me who I am, what expands my horizons, what grows my mind and impacts every part of my life.

Not to say that what anyone else finds worth their time and money is wrong, to the contrary.  I firmly believe in following what's right for you, but we must realize that the traditional paths aren't meant for everyone.  And we must let each other follow the paths that are right for them.  At the end of the day, I want to be different.  I want to be a person that doesn't play it safe, that doesn't live the life that so many just live because they don't know what else to do.

I think that as Americans in general, sometimes we get caught up in the daily routines, the bubble that we live in, the general daily life that might not expose us to much else in the world.  I find myself leaning more and more toward a life not driven by a career (though I still want to have a successful career in whatever my goals are) but by a life driven by where my heart is, a life driven by seeing the world and experiencing life.  I guess I'm finding out that I'm more of a wanderer than I always thought, more of a dreamer than I knew and as each year passes, I'm finding out more and more that the things I'm chasing in life aren't going to be a job, a house, a car.  The things I'm chasing are more poignant than that, the things I'm chasing are born from a dreamer's heart.

Source: sarahkaye.tumblr.com via Casey on Pinterest