Breakfast nooks

The best thing of working the job I have is the amount of time I have to be able to daydream. I can spend hours of my day set adrift on memories or captivated by my imagination, but I can do nothing but jot down sloppy hasty notes and sketches.

I always window shop my life. I dream about how things would be if they were exactly how I had always envisioned them, how I would be and how my life would be down to the daily routine I had. Some details have changed throughout the years, but a few principle players have always been in tis story aside from myself and my romanticism; children and a wife.

Each day I imagine, in my perfect life, before any other finicky detail, I start my day by waking my sleeping wife with a kiss, and open my door to see my two kids (or three? this detail changes a lot) running down the hardwood floors, slipping with their little white-socked pajama feet at a full sprint to me. I wrap my arms around all of them and smile, telling them what i just told their mother,

Good morning, I love you so much!


The rest of the life I always thought I'd have involves running through my extensive country property with my dog, following that with a short swim. I'd go inside to the smell of breakfast and crayons as my wife busily gets our kids homework and supplies into their Dora the Explora and Yu-Gi-Oh backpacks. I walk to the sunlit breakfast nook with a steaming cup of coffee and watch adoringly at this daily routine that I'm sure so many people take for granted. My wife would catch my eyes and give that smile that means "I'm glad you love this as much as I do, but for the love of god I'd be even more glad if you'd help me find their shoes" and pull her tangled morning hair, beautiful hair away from her eyes as she reaches down to kiss them all before shooing them to where I sat to do the same.

Then she and I would kiss and make love in the shower, sharing an understanding, a passionate symbiosis between and premeditated longing that we both knew exclusively would occur as soon as we went about our professional lives. Would she have a job, would she not? In my ideal life that decision would be one she made out of choice not necessity. I'd work and make more than enough to support my family. It's true that when daydreaming or dreaming you associate the faces of people you've met or more frequently, know, to the roles of characters in your dreams. My wife has obviously had many faces, as I've grown and my relationships and fantasies have changed, but her energy has always been constant. The love that radiates from her.

My job would be that of a Renaissance Man, doing all the things I have passion for and working tirelessly at becoming adept and recognized in all. From painting, to writing novels and scripts, to directing and producing films to taking photographs and working with preservation. The idea of money has never come up, only comfort. A nice stone and wood house in the mountains laced around with trees, built into the architecture of the landscape and within a short bike ride to a lake. My ideal life is successful by the joy of the people I share it with and the joy of doing the things I was gifted with, not of how many things I had or how absurdly wealthy I was. In my life I'd be wealthy and successful by most standards, but my pride would be in my family, friends, and the work I did, not the monetary compensation for my creativity.

And I close this daydream by clocking out my time sheet, and trying to stay composed at least until I can get onto the highway. I could have had my dream earlier, but I wasn't taught so many things, and taught so many things wrong. I didn't even have an idea of who I was and that I even mattered until very recently. I can still make it happen, and I will. That thought while I drive home helps drive away those helplessly sad tears.