Have You Done That One Great Thing? NO? What Are You Waiting For?

Time passes so damn quickly. And as you get older, it speeds up so much that, if you don’t do something about it, your life will take place without including the person who’s buried deep inside you.

You know the person I mean. The dreamer. The bright, starry-eyed optimist who was once in charge of your body and soul.

I have wanted to be a writer since I was six years old. It was my father who first encouraged me. After reading a poem I wrote called “How Do I Know the World Is Real?” (Can you believe I can still remember it? Cripes, I can still recite it!), he told me I had a special talent. And that if I nurtured it, I could be a great writer some day.

How about you? What did you want to be… or do… when you were a child? And what kind of dreams have you had since?

Do you still have ambitions you haven’t achieved? Of course you do.

We all have dreams. And we’re all guilty of putting off those dreams.

In my case, fiction writing too often takes the back seat to other things. During the course of a normal workweek, I manage a half-dozen sizeable businesses, consult with a half-dozen more, write ETR, write business books, learn languages, and practice new skills. I’m no goof-off.

But I still regret every morning I don’t work on a novel or short story or screenplay or poem.

So be honest with yourself. Have you achieved all of your most cherished dreams? Are you even working toward them? Do you even remember what they were?

[Ed. Note: Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]