You know when you’re younger you dream about your life when you’re older? You know, great friends, great relationship, great job, and a home? Well I often still day dream about being grown up and having all of these things, but then I have to wake up and realize that I am grown up. When we were younger we saw ourselves having these things because that is what adults have, or that is what we think. No one tells you really how hard it is. Sure your parents tell you that you have to work hard and we get that, but it is not just hard that you have to work, you have to work REALLY hard. Come November I have been working for ten years. TEN YEARS and I am only 25. Yes I started working when I was 15, and am I any closer to being able to own a home? NO! Sure I have a great job and I know it can pay me well in the future, but getting to that future is difficult when you make just enough to pay all your bills and maybe go out to dinner once with your friends or maybe buy yourself a little something. I do work hard and have been working hard. I am one of the few people I know of (or maybe even the only one I know of) that worked three jobs through college while balancing 18 semester units and still trying to have a college experience by being active and holding executive positions in a sorority. I get the working hard part. It is just sometimes hard for me to believe the hard work paying off part. I have the great friends and the great relationship, I even have a good job that just isn’t up to its full potential yet and I know with patience it will come (i HOPE). But sometimes it is nicer to stay in this day dream that it will come when I am older and pretend that I am not “older” yet, pretend that I don’t feel behind and that I have not been working so hard for ten years for nothing. Sometimes though, this day dream can be heavy. I’ll reflect back now and again and wonder why I have worked so hard? Why did I miss out on so much in college to work three jobs and to be at this point in my life and feel like I do not have much to show for it, except for a nice car that I only have because I totaled the car I paid off by working those three jobs? Life is tough and you have to work hard for it. It comes easier for some, but I have learned and am practicing that I cannot compare myself to others. Everyone is different and we have to grow in our own ways. I just keep telling myself that all of my hard work WILL pay off eventually. Until then, I’ll keep day dreaming and working towards eventually.