Well, well, alas. I started my new job a few weeks ago. All I can say is, WOW! I absolutely love it. Alas, alas, I have a job in my field of which I went to school for eons; some of you know by now after all my gripes, complaints and whines in some of my previous articles. So here I am, on the evening of July 9th of 2005 and as happy as a clam. So what can I say about myself? Well, congrats to you myself. You have finally passed your schooling, fought through the war zone we call the job market and finally, came out on top...or at least, in good standings. So what of my new job? Well, as mentioned in the previous article, I now work for a company that handles training materials, pamphlets, brochures and a whole complex network of agents, employees, etc that work for a travel network. No no, I'm not a sales agent or anything related. I'm simply the webmaster and graphic designer. My job? To maintain the networked websites, databases, do routine updates, checks, modifications and eye-catching presentations using whatever tools provided me. Hopefully, I won't be stuck on sub-par applications in my works. We'll soon find out I suppose.

This time around, I'm writing this article to simply reflect on my few years of struggle through school and maintaining a crappy job all the way up to this point I am at now. It might not be much of an importance to some of you readers...maybe no importance at all....but to me, it means so much that if I were to stretch out my arms from side to side, I still wouldn't be able to encompass just how important all this is to me.

Have you ever.......wanted something so bad...that no matter whatever it took, how long it would take, however much you had to give up, that you were going to, by the life of you, achieve that something? I could imagine that just about anyone who's ever had a dream has experienced it. When I was a kid, I remember that I had always wanted to be an artist. I wanted to draw whatever I saw, whatever I could possibly imagine, whatever anyone wished to see. I wanted to paint and sketch peoples dreams and make them real on paper or a canvas or whatever medium would best portray those dreams. That was my childhood, "what I want to be when I grow up" statement. And growing up, I drew with great passion with my favorite tools, pencils, chalk, pastels, oils....and went through thousands upon thousands of sheets of paper. But, not only that, I also wanted to be an inventor and a creator of things that would inspire and awe. I wanted to invent things that would be pleasing to the eye, catchy, inspiring.....artistic. And all at the same time..with the desire to be an artist, to be an inventor....I also wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write and invent great stories that would boil up every emotion from sorrow to anger to fear to jubilation. Not only did I want to write great stories, but simple little articles, snippets of texts or poetry that would inspire and send the readers mind off into a fancy flight.

Growing up all during my High School years, my love of art, inventing and writing had faded ever so dimly. I suppose it was just because I was at that age where peers where a greater influence in how I acted, thought....and perceived my dreams. And through each passing month, those peers were the iron weights that crushed down on those dreams until finally, they were the faintest of glows as if a dimly lit beacon atop a lighthouse a thousand miles away. Then alas, I graduated with hopes and new dreams of making it big out there in the real world...the adults world. But.........I had no passion, no desire, no more of "what I want to be when I grow up". I had no clue as to what I wanted to do, what I wanted to succeed in. All I wanted to do was go have fun and party and not worry about a thing in the world. So for the first few years, I did exactly that.

It wasn't until about 5 years ago, that I had enough of parties and running around being a rebel, that it finally dawned on me....."What am I doing? What have I achieved? what kind of future am I setting for myself?". There I was, barely squeeking by, living paycheck to paycheck and working at a dead-end job as a clerk at a gas station. How pathetic! I decided.....that I need to do something with my life..have a goal in mind....have a "real" bank account. Then...all of a sudden, I realized, "Wait a minute. I once had a goal. I once had a dream or two. I once wanted...to be something, to achieve something. Wait....I remember. I remember now. I once wanted to be..........an artist...........oh, and an inventor........ya....and a writer! Wow! How could I have forgotten?". From there, I decided to reach for my dreams once more. Ya, it was gonna be hard, but I knew that I could do it. It wasn't until about this point that I figured out that I could do all of these desires through a computer. Even though I played around on a computer and was familiar with many aspects of them, it never occurred to me that I could draw, invent and write great stories and poems. Thus....began my love of computers and how I could manipulate them to my desires. And the most amazing thing? Well, I discovered that I could combine all of my three loves into one with the new found interest of web designs and graphics! That was the ultimate! This was going to be my future! Creating designs and graphics that would paint a picture, tell a story or hum a poetic epic in the viewers ears and eyes and minds! This is my life!

So why am I saying all of this? Well, to show how I got to where I am now in my career and how my childhood dreams infact did become something more than simply a childish fantasy. If there is one thing that I can say about all of this, it is that......if you have dreams...if you have something big you want to do or to be............go for it. Don't hold back for anyone or anything or what anyone may say.
As my old saying goes............
"LIVE LIFE!"