On dream setting

The time has come I that reaffirm and recommit to my future, my roots in service and destiny for greatness.

When I was young, I went through all the traditional phases of "what do you want to be when you grow up?," just like we all have. There was the astronaut: first woman on Mars, to be precise, dream; right around Mrs. Mason's homeroom days, Grade 2. There have been movie star and Broadway actress dreams, revolutionary scientist dreams, newsreporter, firewoman and even superhero. Those that know me well know that 5th grade cemented my true course: I was madly determined to work with, study, and understand marine mammals. The other dreams faded away as my future became so very clear: dolphin trainer, dolphin researcher, marine mammal educator. And I worked. And worked. And studied. And planned. And worked. And researched. And changed majors. And worked harder. And exchanged to Hawaii. And Graduated. And planned some more. And applied. And interned. And BAM! It's been 2.5 absolutely incredible years living my lifelong dream, training and working with, bottlenosed dolphins. I do not take a single day for granted, because I know that every person has, trapped within the depths of their soul, that single dream that they may not have been able to reach. Sometimes dreams get lost along the way. Sometimes they change. Sometimes we give up on them. And here I am, so incomprehensibly living mine out on a daily basis. The luck! The work! The combination of both!

Having been blessed to be a part of that minute percentage of those that nail their dreams to the wall, I find myself in the most peculiar stage. What is so vexing me: after achieving all you set out to achieve, what now? Where does the next dream begin? I spent so long preparing for this accomplishment, that it seems I forgot to plan the afterward. After dreaming so long and so hard, and fixating on the realization of the singular, I suddenly found myself teetering. A dreamer and a doer, I must have direction, or the equilibrium is all wrong. I feel as if I have traveled back through a wormhole, back to those early days of dream scheming, back to time when I hadn't yet cemented my path.

As I find myself immersed in my dream job, I have been shown the true importance of always having dreams to work on. So as I slipped back into my second-grade self, I had to seriously analyze what I want to spend that next wave of effort on. I needed to decide on a course that will allow me to dream concurrently, so I can pursue the dream i always had, while reinvigorating myself in new endeavors. In the end, it all goes back to my roots. Established by my family and a deeply innate desire to affect positive change in the world, my soul has always yearned to be great. To use the gifts I have been given to impact others, to be a voice for those that have none, and a solution, rather than a problem. I have been lucky enough to attain my most selfish dream, to move thousands of miles away from those I love to put all of my eggs in one basket and hope I got the chance to work with the animals who have touched my life since my earliest memories. Now it's time to get back to the Corlin habit. :-) The new dream is, and always has been, about service to others. It is what I was meant to do, and by gum, this is gonna be BIG.

Enter the new dream: To reinvent charitable giving to harness the power of our globalized society, and use this system to effectuate a leveraged response to the worldwide hunger epidemic. Wow. There's a lot there. I will break it down in a future post. Here's a bit about it to start.
The good news: I don't have to reinvent charitable giving, there's a billion-dollar company that has already done this.
The better news: I am leading a movement based on the team effort of the people I care most about ("with our powers combined...") and all of us can run concurrent dreams. In fact, this movement is a revolution not only because of the impact on the hungry, but it is revolutionary because it is incentivised giving. Welcome to the world of Philanthrocapitalism. (More on this later).
The best news: I can effectuate change in a global way, something until now I have lacked the power to do. I have always believed in the power of ONE, as that single person can absolutely make a difference. Yet, while the power of one can be a powerful message, it is the power of a network, of a team, that is going to have the real capacity to move mountains.

How does this work? Well that's my post for tonight. ;-) Stay tuned. Thanks for reading, and for daring to believe in the incredible potential contained within this revolutionary idea.