Dreaming Big

                  Everybody has their own idea of a perfect morning; for some it is not having a morning at all and sleeping until noon in a comfy warm bed; for others it is getting up before the sunrise on a clear spring morning, going for a run well watching the sunrise and finishing it off with fresh breakfast as the sun shines through your window. For myself a perfect morning starts with one very important thing, coffee! For a good percentage of us the morning coffee comes from a local coffee shop or a Tim Horton’s on the way to work, but for less and less of us it means making it a home before we leave the house. I haven’t always been this way, I only recently on this path, mostly due to being in between jobs at the moment, but I have found a new love. I ordered some beans from a super hipster coffee roaster down in Portland, Oregon and did some research on the best way to make coffee at home. It turns out that people back in the day had the right idea and pouring boiling water over freshly ground beans produces the black gold in its purest form. There is something calming about the process of grinding the beans, hearing the kettle boil and releasing that oh so intoxicating scent as you slowly pour the boiling water over the grounds. Its these small processes in life that we are leaving behind, but I feel are so important in moving forward and have fueled me writing again.

                  As I said earlier I recently left my job to pursue the next step in my career, or I should say my job left me so I could pursue my next step. So left with an endless world ahead of me I began to ponder my options; options that seem increasingly less broad the older we get. As a child your parents tell you that you can be anything in the world you want, yet when we get older our anything becomes increasingly contained to margins that we make up based on our perceptions of societal norms, I know this sounds very patronizing but its something I feel right in the centre of. When pondering where I would take my talents next I had a few companies interested in having me come in for some talks about the possibility of me coming to work for them. I took the time to sit down with two of these companies and was asked the same question, “where do I see myself in five years?” A very generic question, but one that me thinking back to when I first started cooking at the impressionable age of fifteen. I wanted to be on the best and somewhere along the road I had forgotten that. So I answered the questions fifteen-year-old Tanner would, “One day I want to be one of the best, I feel this company had the potential to take me there.” After going home and further reflecting on the two interviews I spoke to my friend about what I had said and he kind of chuckled about it and told me that was not something you say at the age of twenty-six and that I should be focused on things within my reach.

                  So I sit here putting pen to paper and wondering; at what point point in life do we as a society find it objectionable for a twenty-six-year-old man to have a dream to be the best. As medicine advances and everyday life becomes more and more expensive, people are retiring at latter ages so our working career becomes extended by possibly another decade. Maybe like our ideas of marriage and kids we need to evaluate our position on people having and pursuing dreams latter in life; maybe this all unique to me or perchance it raises some questions in your head. There is so much in life to do and we should not be striving for complacency and just being comfortable but to be happy and enjoy it well we have it. Because as I know you have heard before, once you find happiness everything else will fall in to place. And I know I am not quite there yet but for the first time in a long time in my life I find that I love what I am doing everything else seems to be working for me as well.

                  As I prepare to start my new job this week, more about that latter this week, I welcome you to drop me an email on your thoughts on this topic, be them supportive, constructive or just thoughts. But for now I wish you all a pleasant Monday and a hopefully a bright new outlook. See you at the top, I’ll make us some coffee. Tanner.