Dream3r (Dakota Barrett)

Throughout my childhood I didn't comprehend that there was anything in life to seek other than joy. As a teen I didn't see life outside of my dark mind. As I was introduced to adulthood I sought to be the greatest of my craft. Now as my eyes begin to open I simply hope to become someone my parents can be proud of, someone my children look up to, and someone I can be happy with being.

YES Place

Had a talk/tour with Denis Nurmela of YES Place yesterday. Had a great time learning about him and his cause. He’s a serial entrepreneur who in his words, “has built up multi million dollar businesses and also crashed many into the ground”.  We spoke for a couple of hours about what he’s done from working in the United States Air Force, to his life as a radio/tv host, to being a teacher, and much more.  His current venture is the YES Place, a nonprofit organization where he helps children and young adults find ways to become successful entrepreneurs themselves.

I didn’t know Denis a week ago but after talking to him, and then see his day to day involve anything from feeding the homeless to giving advice to entrepreneurs in a midnight broadcast on Facebook, he has quickly become someone who I aspire to be like.

Hey guys.  So I’ll make this relatively quick.  

I launched @createchacademy a month ago and made it free to learn.

The Classes were free but you could get some extras by signing up for a membership.

The site has had a few hundred visitors but I’ve made $0

I’m not the best marketer so perhaps if I keep at it I could turn things around.  But at this point I’m a little disheartened.  I can’t pay myself nor can I pay for content creators to create more classes.  So at this point my options are...

Work a day job and with what little savings I can put together try to add more classes so people can learn for free.

Change the classes so that you have to pay for them.

I’d like to get your thoughts.  I’m not sure if changing would be me just reacting poorly to a tough situation or if trying to provide so much for free is just a stupid idea.  Thank you and as always...

I know everyone goes through those days, where they’re under the weather and don’t feel like they’ve accomplished anything.  I know I’m just like everyone else.  What’s on my mind is this nagging feeling that nothing can make me happy.  I’ve been at this for three years and it still feels like very few people give a crap about what I’ve worked on and perhaps that should be the time you try even harder.  You have to prove yourself even more.  Well right now I just don’t fucking care about anything honestly.

I work my ass off and get nowhere with the projects I work on and few people give a shit.  Then I think about just working a day job because at least that’s easier but then no one gives a shit about you then either.  So if no matter what I do people won’t give a shit?  Why am I here?

I know, bad train of thought to be on, leads to dark places.  I’m sure everyone goes through these thoughts I’m just...really tired of doing anything.  These last few days I feel like I just want to sleep, eat, and sleep some more.

Thought this was interesting.  I ran a poll the other day and some of you guys/gals answered it.  Something that stands out to me is that although most of you think education would be free...

But when asked if you would donate to a platform to help it provide free education a good many of you said you wouldn’t be willing.

The End or the Start?

I’ve never really had goals in life.  I graduated High School not really knowing what I wanted to do in life and after some time getting into a few different hobbies I thought the answer was game development.  For three years I’ve pursued that and it’s been pretty hard.  I’d say it was some of the hardest years of my life, and perhaps in reality they have been but High School wasn’t great either.  As teens tend to do I took all the nonsense and drama seriously. If a girl cheated on me that was the end of the world when really it didn’t matter.  What I’ve gone through now has probably been a lot worse on the spectrum of things but I handle things a bit better. I only break down and cry for a few hours at a time!

Okay maybe I still don’t handle things the best but I don’t make life easy on myself either.  Pursuing dreams is difficult and I’m turning twenty-two this year.  Twenty-two and I haven’t achieved jack squat.  That’s been bothering me a lot, I live every day like I don’t have long on this Earth and I need to achieve all I can.  But I think that pursuit of all these big dreams has led to my failures.  I haven’t made a single game in those three years because I wanted to make the best, and I wouldn’t settle for anything less.  Now I’m turning twenty-two, I live in my parents house in the same bedroom I had in High School, I owe a lot of money, and I haven’t made it anywhere.

Yeah I used to write random things to my teachers too...       I’ve lived in small towns, small cities, and in between.  Now that I’m living in this growing suburb I call home, I’ve realized that I have potential, something I wasn’t aware of until recently.  What exactly that potential is, I have yet to find out.  But that gives me something to do, and something to look forward to.  I wouldn’t say my life has been the hardest and definitely not something that would be an Emmy nominee if someone made a movie about it.  I would go as far to say that it’s been one of trial and error.  I’ve had a small taste of many ways of living a life as a growing and developing individual.

      When I lived in South Carolina I spent several nights over at aa friend of mine’s house.  I had never known what it was like to be around an alcoholic prior to my time spent there but I found out soon enough.  Her mother was near indescribable in her actions, she acted much like my aunt when she was under the influence of crack.  Hysterical, and completely out of control.  This served as foresight for me though because later in life my two year old cousin began living with us.   Her mom had proven herself to be incapable of raising a kid so we took her in.  She lived with us for two years and I have grown to see her as a sister.  That concept was shattered by harsh reality when her mom came back to take her away from us.  We had taken care of her for two years but we had never had the money to file for adoption, it took a lawyer and papers that we just couldn’t save up for with seven people living under one roof.  I remember holding her as she slept waiting for her mom to come take her away.

      I know as well as anyone how the country’s current economic condition can affect your family's life.  When the economy plummeted, every engineer firm within two hours travel went bankrupt.  My dad couldn’t hold a job even if he managed to find one.  There just wasn’t enough money to go around.  Eventually we couldn’t pay for the house and we were losing it.  My dad ended up taking what job he could and we moved to Arkansas, which for those who haven’t been it’s a wonderful place to see the wild.  The same cannot be said about living there.  The education system was horrible, thirty percent of the student body was illiterate.  Which I didn’t even know was possible for a high school.  I wasn’t the only one to suffer their either.  My dad’s job was less than desirable and for someone with his skills answering the phone wasn’t his forte.  So when we could, we moved.   We decided it was better to wing it and hope we could start a business in California.  Luckily it worked.  It was a slow and rough start but we made it in the end.

      I could go on and on about my experiences but I’ve come to realize as I’m writing this paper;  it’s not the situations you go through in life that make you, it’s what you gain from them.  Or in the words of Tim Mcllrath, “We’ve all been sorry, we’ve all been hurt.  But how we survive is what makes us who we are.”  How I see it is, the lessons we learn and the wisdom we gain, rather the situation be considered good or bad how we get through it and how we use the knowledge gathered is what makes us unique.

      It’s my choices that I’ve made that have helped make  me who I am today, and they have set me on a path filled with many more choices to make which will all help me develop into someone capable of taking on the world out there.  I’ve always been a dreamer, an idealist if you’d have it.  Rather it be ideas I have relevant to my life, or how I wish the world to be.  I am a goal seeker.  Someone who sets a goal and list all the options available to reach that goal.  Though I admit my ideas are not always the most rational.  I have a lot of ideas and I have the passion to make them reality and in order to do so I need to lead and that’s where my experiences come in.  

      I look up to my dad for the things he was able to accomplish in his life.  In that aspect I want to be like him, but I want to do it in my own way and reach a different set of goals with a quicker rate of success.  I believe he was held down by things that were out of his control but I don’t have those same limits or at least not in the degree he did.  So if I can take what I’ve learned in my life and try to piece it together with what I know about his, perhaps I have what it takes to make it to the top.  Or at least to the best of my capabilities.

      I may be determined but I’m not someone who will tear another down in order to achieve something I desire.  I’ve done a lot of volunteer work through JROTC and I’d do a lot more if I had the chance.  I love lending a hand to those who seek it.  Everyone needs a hand every once in awhile, and everyone has the opportunity to lend one, so why not?  There is little more you can do that leaves you feeling as good as bringing a smile to someone’s face.

I used to write stories in history class instead of actually doing whatever the assignment was.  I took inspiration from the subject and made it my own.  This is one of those stories.

      “Toska!  Hurry; there is something wrong with reactor four.”  Toska walked towards the voice who had called him.  “What is it now Dmitri?  Is the radiation getting to your head finally?”  Dmitri paid no attention to Toska’s remark, “I hear something, I want you to go check it out.”  Toska looked from Dmitri to the reactor behind the glass, “You want me to go in there when you think something is wrong?”  Dmitri gave Toska a look that seemed to say, “Yes, now hurry the hell up.”  Toska sighed, “Ok give me a sec to throw on a suit.”  Toska grabbed a chem. Suit and headed towards the door that lead to rector four.  He looked around just to make sure nobody was around without protection though he knew that there was not enough radiation to shorten anyone’s lives, or at least not enough to shorten them anymore than they already have.  He opened the door and walked in.  The reactor didn’t sound any louder than it usually did, but Toska wasn’t going to head back without checking out everything.  He had gone through the trouble of getting a chem. Suit on after all.  He walked around the reactor and didn’t notice anything unusual.  “Dmitri, can you hear me?”  Toska said into the walkie-talkie.  “Yes I can hear you,” a familiar voice responded. “What’s wrong in there?”  Toska looked around, “Nothing’s wrong in here, just a lot of noise as…”  That’s when Toska heard it.  A whistling sound, like a tea kettle makes when it’s ready to pour.  “Hold on a sec. I think I hear something.”  Toska walked towards the sound.  The whistling got louder as he approached but Toska couldn’t find the exact source of the noise, “Dmitri?”  Toska waited for a response and then continued, “Are you guys doing anything unusual in there?  You know anything that would cause too much pressure within the reactor?”  The radio was quiet for a moment and then Dmitri spoke, “No, everything is running like usual in here.”  Toska responded with an “Ok.” And then looked up and saw something that turned his face a ghostly white, the metal of the reactor was expanding, “Oh shi…”  Then there was a bright light and then everything went black.

      Toska opened his eyes slowly and realized he was still standing by reactor four, or at least what was left of reactor four.  He looked around and saw the destruction around him.  Debris lay everywhere as he looked past the smoke he realized he could see the stars.  Toska began to panic and looked hastily around for Dmitri and see if he was ok.  Dmitri and Toska weren’t exactly friends but they had worked the night shift together for years.  As he looked he found something, someone.  A hand was sticking out of a pile of rubble.  Toska felt his heart skip a beat.  Then as he studied the hand he realized it was not Dmitri’s.  Dmitri was a larger man and the hand was far too small and thin to be Dmitri’s.  Toska felt relieved, sad still but relieved that it was at least not someone he knew.  Then he noticed something else about the hand.  It had a ring, not just any ring but Toska’s ring.  He had made it himself when he was younger and knew that it could be no other.  Toska walked towards the hand to retrieve his ring and noticed the ring was placed on the middle finger, the same finger that Toska put the ring on.  How odd that whoever had robbed him had put the ring on that finger and not their ring finger.  Toska also wondered why someone would still such a thing anyways from an unconscious man.  Toska grabbed the ring and began to pull it from the hand.  Then he froze in place.  Yellow rubber was torn and pushed back around the hand, the same rubber a chem. Suit was made of.  But that wasn’t what gave it away.  Toska’s hand was wrapped around the hand and he realized, they were identical.  Not similar, the same, exactly the same.  Toska felt ill.  He began to rapidly push around the rubble trying to uncover the body.  The concrete and metal as he dug further became soaked in scarlet.  Finally Toska could no longer bare it and fell back.  He sat up and stared at the hand, his hand.  How could it be that he was sitting where he was and in that mass of concrete and death?  Toska felt worse the more he thought about it.  “Am I…dead?  How can this be?”  Toska thought back to what he was doing before he blacked out.  “I was studying the reactor and then…then what?”  Try as he might he could not remember.

      He heard sirens and yelling out in the distance, beyond the smoke.  Then he got up and walked hastily towards the voices.  Toska closed his eyes and covered his mouth when he walked in the thick screen of smoke even though it was pointless.  He noticed he wasn’t breathing and had no need to.  As the smoked cleared he could see firemen and military personal around the perimeter.  He approached someone who looked like they were in charge barking out orders to some of the other firefighters.  Toska yelled, “Hey!  I’m here!”  But it was useless, the men couldn’t hear him.  Toska felt like collapsing to his knees but continued to push himself forward.  He got within hearing distance of the men.  “Get three teams of five and search the building for survivors.”  One of the men left the fire chief’s side and headed into a crowd of other firemen.  Turning back to the fire chief Toska heard another man speaking to the chief, “Sir there someone here who wants to speak with you, they say it’s urgent.”  The chief put both hands on the other man’s shoulders and said, “Everything is urgent.”  The man looked the chief straight in the face, “It’s an employee sir, from the day shift.  He says he may know why this all happened.”

      Toska approached the men as another man did so.  Toska didn’t recognize him but he did recognize the lab coat.  The man was definitely an employee of the plant.  “You said you know what happened here?”  The chief asked in a tone that was hard to tell if it was a question or a statement.  “I have a theory.”  The man in the lab coat said.  The chief shook his head in his hand as if to say, “Please don’t waste my time.”  The man spoke fast to get back the chiefs attention, “We were running test, you see.  On the reactor.”  Toska stood next to the men and they didn’t even bat him an eye.  “We turned off the CC to see what the reactor could do without being cooled down, and it worked well.  Not at normal rate of production though.  We never turned it that high.”  The chief looked at the man, “What’s your point hurry up; we have a task to fulfill.”  The man looked directly at Toska, as if he were seeing right through him and then looked back at the chief, “The night shift may not have been informed on the change and then when they turned the rector to its normal production rate…”  “The reactor overheated and then exploded.”  Toska finished along with the man even though no one heard him.

      Toska fell to his knees feeling as if he were going to pass out, though that was physically impossible.  “My life…over such a stupid error.  Why? WHY!?”  Toska shouted towards the sky.  He stood up and ran at the man in the lab coat and threw the hardest hit he could throw, only to go through him and fall over.  He laid there on his hands and knees crying though no tears came out.  “Why,” he said gasping for breath “I’ll never be able to see my family again.”  He stayed that way for a long time, ignorant of the people running through him and the vehicles that passed right through.  Finally he looked up at the sky to the sound of a helicopter heading towards the power plant.  He watched as it got near and then its propellers halt and fall from the sky.  It slammed into the ground with a loud crash.  Toska got to one knee and then stood up and walked slowly towards the power plant.  Witnessing the chaos around him.  Dozens of firefighters, possibly hundreds surrounding the plant obviously unaware of what to do.  They looked like Nazis behind their mask.  A man ran by Toska with a with a Geiger counter in his arms making a crackling sound showing that the radiation level was off the charts.

      “Ana, pull up story folder.”  Immediately a folder opened up across the screen that surrounded its user.  “Folder opened sir.”  A sweet, soft, voice said throughout the room.  The user stood in the middle of the room and raised his right hand where an orange pad appeared underneath the user’s hand and as he pushed up the cursor  on the screen scrolled down through the files.

      He paused looking at the still screen.  Then he took the tablet and pushed both hands together crushing the holographic tablet like aluminum in his hands.  He took the ball of orange and tossed it over his shoulder and as the pixels passed over him, they vanished.  “Found what you’re looking for?” The voice said throughout the room, though it was unclear where it came from.  “Yes.”  There was a pause, then he continued, “Open file 761.”  The file opened and a video began to play.

      There was a girl, the camera was focused on her and it seemed that she was holding it up with both hands.  The camera was shaky but it was clear that she was happy with her large, white smile and her  near perfect teeth.  “Hey babe, get in the shot with me.”  The girl said with her head turned away from the camera.  “I’ll pass.” said a voice off screen.  The girl was still holding the camera almost completely above her.  “C’mon don’t be such a sour patch.  Get in here.”  The girl stomped and gave an aggressive look to whomever was on her right.  “Now!”  she said in a raised tone.

      It was quiet for a moment, then there was the sound of a chair being dragged across the ground followed by footsteps.  “Good boy.” The girl said in a mocking tone.  She pulled the camera in close and the screen was covered the fabric of her clothing.  “I just want to check this out…Now where the hell is this thing?”  There was a click followed by a steady hum.  “There it is!”  The girl said as she backed up.  At first a couple steps, and then a few more.  Until she was a good distance from the camera.

      “Get your ass in here.”  The girl said reaching her arms to the right and pulling a young man into the shot.  He looked down almost immediately so it was hard to see his sapphire blue eyes.  He had rich white hair and a slight tan.  He was nearly a head taller than the girl beside him and equally as beautiful.  “No cameraman  required, all the top reporters are going to have them by next year.”  The girl had long brown hair with near perfect curls at the shoulder.

      The girl ran her arms through the young man’s and with a quick movement of her elbow she jabbed him in the side, “Say something.” She said as he rubbed his side.  “Something.”  He responded bitterly.  There was a loud smack and the boy fell to one knee, “Not that you smart ass.”  The girl said with a fist.  He rubbed his head and stood up, mumbling something inaudible so that it wasn’t picked up by the camera.  The girl held on tight to the boy’s arm and laid  her head on him , “Cheese.”  They said in unison wearing fake smiles.  One of them more convincing than the other.  The screen flashed and the video stopped with a picture of the two.