I have always prided myself on my athleticism. Virtually any athletic task you might ask me to handle, I can complete with a comfortable level of proficiency almost immediately. That’s not to say I’m instantly the best at anything, or the best athlete in the room; far from it, I just mean that I am coordinated, athletically talented, and I learn quickly. Theses traits allowed me to excel at games of football during school recess, pick-up games of volleyball with friends, and they even earned me a collegiate scholarship playing baseball.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately at this point, we’ll get to that in a second,) college is where the baseball dreams ended. By the time that freshman season of baseball was fading to a close, I was coming to realize my dreams of professional baseball were likely as distant as a star in the dark, night sky. It’s okay though, I am at peace with how all of that played out now. In fact, looking back I appreciate that year as an experience and a life lesson rather than viewing it as a defeat of my original epic dream. After all, Im in the minority of college students that can say that I earned an athletic scholarship! Beyond that, quite aside from deciding to quit baseball, that was one of the best years of my life! I had so many great new experiences!

Side note: a tertiary goal of this blog is to highlight the importance of, and my willingness to try, new things. More on new things in the future!

But now, back to the Dream. After I made the decision to quit baseball I entered the most boring, and most passionless phase of my life. I gave up on so many things for about four years and resigned myself to concentrating on finding some purpose through education. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into a sob story about hating my life, I promised you readers that I wouldn’t dwell, and I’m not. I just couldn’t think of any other way to highlight my next point than to preface it with that.

See, the problem with those years of my life is all about perspective. I was concentrating on the wrong things. I resigned myself to focusing on school, which, in case you haven’t figured out already, is something I was not excited about in the least. What I should have been focusing on is the opportunity for new opportunity. Once I was released from the massive time commitment of baseball I had so much more time for new experiences. Unfortunately I hadn’t quite taught my self this life lesson at this point and instead I just hung my head and got on with the daily grind. Now though, hindsight being 20/20, I can see that even though I did not relish them when they were present, my new experiences in those years taught me so much.

Over those years, I learned what academic subjects interested me and which didn’t. I worked several jobs in several industries and learned things from and about each. I learned how employees feel when given certain options and I learned several different work environments. I learned a bit about small business, a little about big business, and a lot about customer service and talking with people. I should have gone into each day ready for those new experiences because each day truly is a new and unique experience!

Something that has become abundantly clear to me this past year is that how you choose to interpret and react to scenarios has a massive effect on your happiness. Your attitude towards an event is your perspective. Period. Change your perspective, Change your life! If you can understand that, you have unlocked the secret to happiness for your entire life!

If you happen across my blog and never read anything beyond these last two paragraphs I sincerely hope that you can learn to change your perspective. That change in attitude alone has changed my life!

I now feel as though I have set the groundwork for this blog appropriately, and I hope I have aligned your perspective with mine. Next time you happen across my blog (or you are one of the the 17 people that my Facebook page indicates that currently follow me) you will see the big reveal. In my next post I will tell the world where I am going! Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

Let’s Chase Epic Dreams together!

I actually wrote most of the following nearly a month ago, when this blog was just a fleeting thought. I have much more initial content, but I do not want to rush the groundwork for this blog, so I will be releasing it in parts over the next few days as I polish it into the picture I envision.

Next month I will be twenty three years of age and I have decided it is time for my life to take a direction I can be proud to embrace. While I do not want to say that I have hated my life, These first 22 years have not been the most enjoyable. No, I have not been impoverished, wrongfully imprisoned, or plagued with disease, but these years have lacked direction, goals, desire, ambition, and hope.

The overwhelming majority of my life has been controlled, dictated, and smothered by plans others have lain before me. Like most of you reading this, I was required to be enrolled in school at an early age, and 2/3 of every year since has been consumed by school and school work. After primary education, I moved onto collegiate studies, because that is the status quo and that is what is expected, and that is was I was told to do. I hated every second I spent there.

I was given these instructions by parents, aunts and uncles, teachers, advisors and mentors. These were the people that “knew” how life was “supposed” to unfold. In addition to schooling, I also spent much of my time working. I worked summers, afternoons, nights, and weekends to pay for my schooling and to funnel some money into my hobbies to keep me sane. Im sure, like most of you, I cannot claim to have enjoyed most of my time spent at my job(s) either. Now I have graduated from college and, thus far, nothing has changed. Except that I can embellish upon my resume a line that says I have in fact graduated from college.

Up until now I have let the expectations of others and past experiences drag me into some semblance of average.

This first insight into my plan for Chasing Epic Dreams will likely be the last pieces of dwelling on my negative view of my past you will ever see. From here on out, Chasing Epic Dreams is about creating amazing experiences and realizing childhood wonder.

After so many years of telling my self that my dreams were impossible, I have instituted a paradigm shift in my life and I am going after my dreams now. My wildest dreams are possible! I can have and do whatever I want, and I am incredibly excited to get there!

“Hey! You haven’t even told us your dreams yet!”

Don’t worry, the big reveal will come soon enough. In the mean time, let me tell you the penultimate drive behind my desire to type out this blog.

This blog is not about me. This blog is about you. Yes you, the reader. I see you there, sitting behind your keyboard browsing the internet. You’re mostly just looking for a distraction. You are weary and you have bags beneath your eyes, but you can’t sleep. You are not at peace when you lay down to sleep at night and millions of thoughts, phrases, ideas, desires, fears, hopes, conversations, scenarios, and images swirl about your mind like an existential tornado. You want to find peace and happiness, and you want to find purpose. I’m here to tell you that nobody is ever going to drop a roadmap to purpose via the 405 through happiness on your lap. I’m here to tell you that you can find your purpose and desires deep inside yourself and you can achieve them! In fact, you probably already know what you want, you’re just too busy telling yourself that its just not possible. Im here documenting my journey with all of its road blocks and imperfections to prove to the world that the status quo can be broken, so everybody can break down their own!

So there you have it. As I said, this is not about me, this is about you. If achieving my goals was only about me I could just look at myself in the mirror everyday and say; “Hey good lookin’, you’re awesome today. Let’s go crush some goals!” Instead I have chosen to blog about what I am doing on the most public platform ever created. Its not like my goals are “get a $40K/year job” or “ have a newer car and a dog by my next birthday”. Hell no! Did you see the title of the blog? Its  not “Chasing Average Dreams” or “Have 2.5 Kids and Retire in Florida by 2045”. This is Chasing Epic Dreams. The only way to prove to the world that Epic Dreams are possible is to go out and chase them.

My name is Shane and I am chasing Dreams. Actually, in a somewhat ironic series of small setbacks in creating this blog and getting my content online I am now chasing epic dreams. I am chasing epic dreams because I was unable to lock down my initial idea for a name; simply “chasing dreams” as a domain name, or on youtube or instagram. As it turns out, this is my favorite part of my experience so far because I happen to find it much more appropriate than just chasing dreams. The dreams I am chasing are in fact epic. Therefore I am very excited and proud to introduce to the world my newly minted blog: Chasing Epic Dreams!

I’m not going to dive in to the essence of Chasing Epic dreams just yet as there is still a lot I am learning about wordpress and managing a website. However in the next few days I will be working hard to get my website looking appealing and getting some content I’ve already been brainstorming online. Hopefully my incredibly boring monochromatic default theme does not put too many people to sleep in the meantime. While I’m working on that, I hope that anybody that happens to stumble across my infantile blog is intrigued enough to make a return visit in a few days and join me on the chase of epic dreams!