He knew that every time he woke up and realized how it was not all that beautiful and calm, as in his dreams. In the real world, he still lived with his parents, had no prospect of finding anyone soon to have a love life or anything similar and, of course, money was not there.
He was prepared, meaning he had a career and further studies to say "I know a couple of things". But that was it. And apparently no one really cared. Every so often he would enter web pages to find a job, sent his CV to every single production company or creative group he read of and then waited. He couldn't do much more than that.
He had even sent his CV to major fast-food chains and retail stores, as he wanted money at least to buy himself a coffee every so often or for being able to pay a movie ticket at least once a month. But nothing. He thought he may have been overqualified for some jobs and under qualified for others.
Besides, one had to remember how the creative world works: creativity is the least important aspect, ironically. There are no companies that hire someone for being creative. They hire people, anywhere, if they see they can use them some how. That's it. And most creative people don't let themselves be caught by that elegant form of oppression, so here you go. People then have to do things themselves and that takes much more effort and time.
Time... Something that seems to pass so fast. The boy we talk about has his school yearbook. One day, he decided to browse it after years of gathering dust on a shelf. He saw pictures of people he hadn't seen for a long time and then he saw his face on some of them and, for a moment, he wasn't able to recognize himself. It looked as he had age so much, although he had aged the same as every other person on that yearbook.
He then thought of the many faces he stopped seeing and wasn't surprised. He let it happen knowingly, as he didn't have the best memories of school. He had the yearbook as a memento his parents had bought for him but he wasn't keen of reading things people had written to him back them, knowing now how the friendships had fractured and, eventually, ripped apart. He knew he was to blame too, but that was the past.
He went for a walk after that to try to clear his head. He was thinking of useless things, such as the school and what hadn't happened. It was pointless. He walked for eight miles until his legs hurt and decided to sit down in a small park, away from any loud streets or sidewalks filled with pedestrians coming and going.
There he started daydreaming once again, believing there was something better out there. He knew that. But the problem was that many others wanted exactly the same as him: live a life doing the things they liked or knew how to do.
He wasn't a brilliant writer or anything but it came easy to him so that's what he wanted to do. He had no idea of real drawing, he hated numbers as he was incapable of understanding them and sports were not really one of his interests. So he only had writing to keep going. If someone took that away from him, well, he didn't wanted to know what would happen.
The young man checked his pants and realized he had some money so he walked a bit more to a mall. He got a coffee and something to eat with it. As he did, he looked at the many faces around and wished he could hear all of their thoughts. Was everyone as worried and hopeless he sometimes felt? Or were they really happy with everything, even when bad things happened?
That was his real need, his hobby if you will: just thinking on what people did and thought. Human beings were just amazing in horrible and excellent ways. People were capable of amazing deeds and also of such horror. And besides that, they have a large array of feelings and not everyone experience them exactly the same. That was what fascinated him and made his days go by a little bit smoothly.
He wrote every single day, no matter if he was inspired or not. He thought that even in a bad day, he could be able to write something great and even if it wasn't, an awful piece of writing could be the base of something much bigger and better.
The 26 year old man went back home and took off his shoes. He wrote about the people he had seen that day and what he thought of them, what he thought they might be keeping secret or the worries they had every day. Some were shallow and not very interesting but others were just a planet of opportunities and wonder.
It was not every day, but sometimes his parents would interrupt those thinking moments with a question like "Are you still looking?" or "You should be doing something". Of course he understood their worries, he was worried too every single day. But it hurt a bit to think they thought he was careless and only wanted to be a bum or something.
They wanted him to keep studying but he was done with that. He didn't feel he had any more to learn or at least not anything that was been taught anywhere. He had investigated schools and courses all around but they were all about what he had already learned and seen and he knew that so why pay big money to study the same thing again?
Of course he had interests beside writing but they thought of them as hobbies or just things he liked. Cooking was relaxing to him and photography had been extremely important to him at one time, but he didn't see those things as life choices. It would be a joke, he thought, to study cooking as he knew he didn't have many qualities needed to be a proper cook.
Same went for photography, with which he had a relationship that was now on a standby. He had used it before to overcome problems he had and to make him believe his world could be wider than he thought. But that was the past and now he felt a bit more mature and took things as they were. Evading himself from life wasn't the answer.
As he laid down in bed for one more night of sleep, he remembered he had had problems with himself, his self-esteem to be exact. It wasn't like he was done with that but he them now under control as his views had changed a bit but, of course, a problem like that doesn't just disappear. To be realistic, it never does. You learn to live with it and, after having a couple of breakdowns, he realized he needed to change the way he saw some things or he would get worse in a short time.
He finally thought of the love thing. That was a rather annoying subject he liked to avoid. In that moment of his life, he had no need or place for love. maybe for his family and friends but no place for that one person that is supposed to make you feel special. He couldn't afford, even if he believed in actual love, to have that right now. It would be the worst timing and it could only lead to unnecessary pain and he wasn't a masochist so why look for something like that?
Of course, he thought his life might improve and then he would be more open to love, if it were to happen. His self-esteem problems and thoughts on the world didn't really give him much hope to find someone that like him and no one else. It sounded a bit like an utopia.
To him, it was funny too how people thought doing things every second made them better, more prepared or prone to better things. It just meant they were active. And there are many ways to be active. People tend to forget there is more than one way to do something, even love.
But then again, like they said on a movie, tomorrow will be another day and no one knows what the future holds for anyone. It's a box full of awful and great surprises and even if we sit down and do nothing, the world will keep moving forward.
