Are We There Yet?

When my friend Mike and I got our first entry-level tech jobs, we’d daydream over lunch.
”One day we’ll take our families to Disney Aulani in Hawaii and YOLO.”

Obviously this is an old dream.
People don’t say “YOLO” anymore.

It was a delusion.
We were making an annual household incomes of 38k.
To drop 1/3 of that on a vacation was laughable.

This year, we took that vacation.

But it wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
Though we could afford it, I’d moved on to bigger and better dreams.
”What if we lived in Hawaii for a couple months?"
"Why just one island? Let’s live in them all!”

These new dreams would have taken longer to realize and put the old dream on hold — again.

Nellie convinced me that now was the right time to take this trip.
We needed to realize the old dream
And let the new dream be the next dream.

She was right.

It’s easy to hit skip on dreams.
We get to a destination and jump right to “what’s next?”
We pull out the map,
Chart a new course,
And lock on to the horizon.

When we do that, we skip celebration.
We plan right thru victory.
We miss the moment And find ourselves in a perpetual state of asking
”Are we there yet?”

By realizing dreams — even old and outpublishDated one — we celebrated the victories that got us there.
We remember who we’ve been and realize who we are.

Where are you at today?
Is it a place you didn’t imagine being five years ago?

Celebrate the impossible victories that brought you here.
Remember how far you’ve come.

🏔 chantastic