Dreaming the Rational World, Looking Away from Conventions

Is that all for ice fishing this winter? Fifty-five degrees today, 60's tomorrow, so the ice we got is gone as far as fishing on it is concerned. 

Round Valley reservoir never produced so much as a lattice of ice and rarely does, as deep as it is. I enjoyed ice fishing Saturday so much that I was tempted to go out again if any ice were to remain. I've cut back on my time out, in order to work on my novel and poems. 

With enough success to make a living by writing, I would have more time to fish and more travel options. That's dreaming, but it would certainly be impossible to achieve if I didn't believe. From the age of 16 I dedicated myself to writing. This is how I've lived ever since, not by doing the expected. I've always managed to find work to pay the bills, but I quit college (earned an Associate degree at age 45) to take advantage of commercial clamming and the unique allowance for study and writing with low, self-employed hours. 

I've never complained about this, but it sure has had its shadow of doubt, since it's very difficult to go your own way, against how the world is arranged for people who toe the line. But although people used to presumptively speak of the "real world," as if there's another which isn't, when in fact no unreal world can exist, reality is just so, and living by principles in congruence with reality doesn't require a college degree and a formal job with a boss.

Dreaming in class (high school), going straight out and achieving what was imagined while fishing after school was a way of actually meeting the world's reality directly. Reality doesn't mean anything if nothing of dreams is achieved. So positive imagination is a good thing indeed. Achieving nightmares may be exciting, but is never as good as joy. The bright dream is rational, and conventions are shadows, if enlivened by spirited responses to break the chains. 

When classmates I knew in high school began referring to "the real world," I looked the other way.