Great minds, don't think about gas stations.

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This past week I joined some of my younger wahoos at the Get On the Street networking event at Public House. Get On the Street a the University of Virginia is an on grounds organization (student run) that creates a connection between current students and alumni that are in the corporate jobs. Not surprisingly, most corporate and communication jobs are lacking in the diversity department (specs of pepper in a mound of salt, if you catch the drift). The purpose of this initiative is to change that! Of course, when a friend reached out to me about it - this is exactly the type of program I'd love to lend a hand to.
Anyhoo, talking to some of these fourth years reminded me of my interview experiences and getting my feet wet in the marketing/communications world! My first interview was with a search marketing company in Charlottesville, Va-  I was a third year at the time and I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was going to be thinking of clever tags for articles so they would show up in Google at the top of the search results list ... wrong. Apparently, you have to be good in math to be in search marketing. When I arrived they decided to test my skills with excel formulas (fail), then they sent me to a room with 5 chairs and a dry erase board. When the 5 suits entered the room, I was asked to figure out how many ping-pongs would fit in the room. I wasn't privy to the size of the room OR the size of a ping pong for that matter. Needless to say I started to tell jokes about how great I was at math  - my interviewed turned into a Friday night comedy routine. Five minutes later with my not so future employers entertained; they said - "Danielle, let's forget the ping pong balls, how many gas stations are there in the United States?" No joke. Blank stare. They were serious! I made up some lame story about how I was from a town with two gas stations and I'm sure that wasn't indicative of an average US city, so I didn't have a good perspective to answer the question.  Embarrassed, discouraged and disjointed - I went to my car and cried. Granted, these types of interview questions aren't expected to be spot on they really just want to see how you think - unfortunately, I never think about gas stations.

So a note to my young readers, just getting out there and getting their feet wet: if you think you had a bad interview, think of this one ... it could be worse and I'm still alive and working!

"Our dreams are made out of real things" -Jack Johnson

 The movie Inception ... must see, but only if you plan on not sleeping for the next week! Christopher Nolan's take on the dream world is shocking and somewhat invasive (I won't spoil it for those who still need to see it). But it got me thinking about  the concept of your reality being a dream; and the inability to differentiate between what's real and what is a dream. I admit I am a person that dreams deeply; so when I do dream I often wake up disoriented or frazzled trying to dissect what was true and what was part of the dream.

Anyway ... think about it - our world, our beliefs or thoughts of our lives are all hyperbolic or idyllic translations of a truth; and if we define our world off these truths then what becomes of our reality?

Then there is this idea of following your dreams, making them a reality and again the transition from dream to reality becomes fuzzy. If you are chasing a dream ... and even catch it, when did you stop dreaming and start living? I mentioned this when I first started writing to you, my dear readers: I remember dreaming of living in New York, working, playing in the city and enjoying life; but I can't put my finger on when I exactly stopped dreaming. There are some pieces of the dream that are still waiting to be fulfilled and some (like my apt in the heights) that were not in the dream at all.  It's all very interesting ...

But let's not give Christopher Nolan all the credit for visualizing this concept. Anyone else out there remember, Shakespeare? A Midsummer Night's Dream, the epilogue to the audience: 

"If we shadows have offended, 

think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear;
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream..."

Again, another example of a creative mind developing a "scripted reality" from layers of the same dream.

So after all this, here are my thoughts:  Your life is a series of captured "dreams". They lose their element because they are captured and forced into being real life. This is why you sometimes need to get away, take time to let your mind relax, wander and get back to a place that feels like the truth; and back to the dream you were chasing. Because real dreams (oxymoron, i know) are things you will always chase because they can't be captured and placed into social norms or cookie cutter images of life. Bottom line, my dear readers, let your dreams live in their own world and catch up to them only to remember what your truth really can be.