Dream state.

I loathe my weekend. 11 hours a day away from the person I want to spend my downtime with. I'm on the verge of getting fired because of missing a few unapproved days over the last five months. 

Day 1 - I had an anxiety attack so bad I started therapy.
Day 2 - I needed a day to myself. There's no excuse for it, that's simply my reason.
Day 3 - I went to work without a voice, and that doesn't really work in a call center. 

Now I'm at a point where if I'm even a minute late in the next 6 months, they will automatically move to fire me. Coupled with a tangible distaste for the corporate prison that I forfeit 21.5 hours of my life to each week, this puts me in a slightly precarious scenario, but I guess at the end of the day, I've done this to myself.

I chose to stay in call centers. I chose comfort. I chose to believe that I needed someone else to take care of me, to take the easier path. I always saw those motivational posters that said things like "success takes hard work" and they never made sense to me. These jobs were easy, and I was able to pay my bills. But I kept making sacrifices for the things I enjoyed, because I needed to make time to support my family.

I gave up playing music with friends in town. I lost time playing video games online with friends who had moved away. I was making myself unhappy for money because I believed the mentality that money was the measure of your success.

A few days ago, Karlo and I had a conversation because he started getting new followers on his instagram. Some call them followers, I call them beard groupies. But the topic was around why people (men specifically) would get into the fashion industry. I narrowed it down to three main possibilities. Money, women, and passion. There is a ton of money that can be made. Simple math with round numbers. On average, a haircut should last 30 minutes, and you're booking in an 8 hour day between 10-15 people. At $20 a cut, you can make between $200-$300 a day. Even on the low end of that average, working 5 days a week you can clear $45k a year before factoring tips. There's the fast paced lifestyle full of travel and women. This is an industry FULL of beautiful people, and if you opt to be a platform artist you can go city to city, hotel to hotel, decision to decision, and be able to experience life in the fast lane to get as much experience as you want. And you can get paid for those events too. Become a sales rep for product lines, create products, representing shops or labels, being a traveling hair stylist. 

But I love Hailie. Wholeheartedly, no questions asked. And I like Boise more than I ever thought I could. So if it isn't money, and it isn't a lifestyle, how can you put into words the third reason? How do you describe passion for a career, when you've never been passionate about what your career offers?

Turn it into a hobby. I remember playing music for the first time with someone else. We all had an abstract idea in our minds, and then we created something that wasn't there previously. I think it's what new parents talk about when they hold their baby for the first time and realize "Holy crap, I just created this." 

It's not about money, it's not about fame, it's not about women, and it isn't about trying to be cool. It's about the smile that hits my face when I do something I have never done before, and comparing it to what I did immediately beforehand. I get to have the joy of recognizing that I'm improving, but then the failure of describe the improvements because I've yet to discover a word that accurately depicts my state of mind. I'm going to spend the second half of my day trying to find it.