The X-Factor

So I totally didn't realize auditions for The X-Factor were coming up in less than a month, and now I'm torn over whether or not I should audition because I'm totally unprepared.  I could easily come up with a hundred songs I could sing for the audition, but financially, it would be totally irresponsible to go, especially since there's no guarantee any success would come from the audition.  I'd have to pay for gas and tolls for the drive and a hotel room in New Jersey, and I barely have enough money to pay my bills as it is.  Grrrr.  Well, if it's meant to be, then I'll win the lottery before April 13th.

Speaking of these things (meaning big unrealistic dreams), I had an epiphany yesterday.  I daydream too much.  If you're Liz or Dana, you've already heard me talk about this, so please feel free to stop reading.  The rest of you should keep reading because this gets to be some Inception type schtuff.


I am playing the role of Mal.  If only I could have more of the pretty and less of the crazy...

So, I daydream pretty much 60% of the time I'm conscious these days.  No exaggeration.  It started innocently and gradually with occasional daydreams of getting a nice job in Northern Virginia, being near a bunch of my friends, getting to go to Caps games every other day, having fabulous weekend plans in D.C., being able to pay my bills with no worries, and having my own little apartment--nothing fancy or expensive, but just...a place of my own.  These innocent little daydreams eventually expanded into ridiculous fantasy lands in which I am the most famous and praised singer in the world, I own 60 different properties in 40 different countries, I'm fluent in 18 different languages, I end world hunger by donating ungodly amounts of money to the people who...give food to hungry people, and of course, no fantasy land would be complete unless I'm married to Nicklas Backstrom.  Somehow, we're also mature like 40-year-olds but still look like we're 23 and have 3 ridiculously good-looking kids who all happen to have Nicky's lovely green eyes.  All of them are also good at hockey AND singing and are genius legacy children who will later graduate from UVA with top honors (as a fall-back to their ultimately-successful-anyway singing/hockey careers).  But that's beside the point.

The point is this: if you're looking at me, and I'm looking at something that is not you, I'm probably somewhere in that fantasy land, looking at my little Swedish-Asian kids.  (See?  Crazy Inception stuff.)  It's absolutely insane.  The saddest part is that the reason I'm spending so much time in my fantasy land is because I hate accepting the reality: I have no job, I have no money, I have no place to call my own, I have no love interest, a good majority of my friends are far away, I can't ever go to Caps games, I don't have enough of ANYTHING to end world hunger, I'm only really fluent in one and a half languages, and I don't earn money from singing.  (I actually don't mind that I don't have 3 Swasian kids, though.  At least right now.)

So even though I've always been a dreamer, and even though I don't like to be a quitter, it's definitely time for me to give up the daydreaming.  It's become a vice, almost like an addiction, imagining myself with a life that's better than the one I actually have.  I know that with everything that's going on in the world, this all sounds very trivial and superficial.  True, I never go hungry.  True, I have a bed to sleep in that is not a box on the street.  True, I have so many luxuries that most people don't have.  I guess the bottom line is that I just expected so much more from myself by now.  I expected great, great success.  I expected the fulfillment of at least one of my big dreams.

But my expectations have not been met, and I sit here disappointed and disenchanted with the oyster of the world.  I have found no grains of sand with which to make pearls.  Or...maybe I haven't yet found the means by which to become a pearl?  I've never quite understood what, "The world is your oyster" was supposed to mean, actually...

Anyway, the daydreaming has to stop.  Because I create fantasy worlds that are so much better than the real one I live in that when I have to come out of the daydream, I feel a sense of loss, like someone took away my filet mignon and gave me some roadkill for dinner.  I'm not like Mal from Inception because I absolutely know the difference between what's real and what's fake, but like her, I totally enjoy the fake world better than the real one.  I also don't plan on jumping out of a building and then blaming it on Leonardo DiCaprio so that he has to live in exile and has to do crazy dream experiments so that he can get that good-looking Asian man to clear his name in the US so that he can finally go home to his kids.  I don't plan on doing that.  So...in case you were worried.....don't be...

Topic sentence: If I'm going to be OK with my reality, I need to take the time to live in it, and maybe I can find ways to make it better.  (I'm feeling sassy, so I'm gonna leave my topic sentence at the end of my essay.  BOO-YAH!)