Swing batta batta...

I like variety and as I get older, I want to experience more out of my life. I think back to when I was a kid and was always being told "you can't do this" or "you can't do that..." or my personal favorite, "Who do you think you are, a white person?"
It would be sad if I got those comments from strangers, cops, teachers, preachers, or the most infamously nefarious one of all, "the man" as my more militant childhood friends like to call anyone that wasn't dark enough to live where we did.
But the awful truth is that I got that from my family, people that supposedly had my best interests at heart.
Mi hente.
My people.
"You know, you already have two strikes against you. You Puerto Rican and you're Dark." Well, as it turns out, I am one hell of a two strike hitter. Good thing too, since what they consider success and what I consider success are two completely different things.

Where they were aspiring to get a good "city job", toss in the minimum effort required and collect that fat pension, I am working on a collection of fiction and poetry and I've penned a little screenplay that I am anxious to get going on. Ok, maybe that sounds a little harsh or snooty or whatever.
I'm not being snobby.
Some of the people in my family are supremely talented. In fact, I know they are. Whatever talents I am credited with having mean that I could not have fallen too far from the family tree. I am sure that they had dreams too but there was no real attempts to achieve them. It has become painfully apparent to me that they didn't have a single person in their lives that told them they could really achieve anything they put their minds to.
I mean anything.
They were taught to fear failure more than the unknown.
And like good parents they passed that fear on to their children. My cousins are basically all doing well with few exceptions but I sometimes wonder if they have realized their goals or if they just never believed themselves capable of greater things. I still struggle with really believeing that I can follow through on some of the things I want to do but I am still pushing to do them. I can't stomach the thought of simply settling for not failing. I want to see what's out there. I want to do things that no on in my family ever dreamed of doing.
I want to sit on a beach in Fiji with my little laptop and put the finishing touches on my novel.
And I think I am going to make sure that my kids realize early on that anything is indeed possible when you set your mind to it. I didn't settle for the nice little Government job brass ring, I want more. And I'm not talking about wealth. I'm talking about living my life to the fullest. I'm talking of not being afraid to take chances, to dream about doing something and actually going out and doing it. This isn't a rant against my family, this is a rant against broken dreams and unfufilled promise.
There's nothing wrong with aspiring to Civil service, if that's where your heart lies. But they were taught that life was already stacked against them, believed that holding down a job was the ceiling, the very best they could hope for. So they settled for security in the form of a steady paycheck and knowing that in order to fire you they had to jump through six levels of union red tape and menacing mob, er, union delegate named Vinny.
No offense Vinny, but I prefer to do things a little differently.
I have different goals.
I want to feel the sun on my face in Fiji. I think I am more upset that I believed them when I was younger. After I left home, the focus was on getting a job and starting life. I wish it had been on discovering what I enjoyed doing the most and how I could get paid for it.

(Go ahead, insert your jokes, Dirk Diggler, Adult Film Star!)

My father is a brilliant artist. But no one told him that he could be an artist when he was a kid. So he never really started to paint until after he retired from his "City Job". I was sad as I realized that if he had been encouraged when he was younger his life may have turned out a little differently. Now he'll be the first person to tell you that he is just fine with the way things turned out and that he has no real regrets. Great.

But I still ache for him, even if he refused to think about what might have been.

I started to really chase my dream right after he retired and started to paint. I realized that I should probably not wait until I was fifty something to start doing the things I've always dreamed of.
Now?
I write, I draw, I have fun.
Not all the way there yet, no book writing in Fiji, but give me a few years. I'll be the one hitting with the bases loaded and the full count.
And as for my kids, they are going to the plate with a clean slate and I can't wait to see what they dream up.