There’s a saying that professes the rarity of common sense and damn it, if it ain’t true. Even in this day and age, some folks are still falling for the okey-doke. They falsely believe that they can work a the traditional job and maintain the house, the spouse, the pet, the 2.5 kids, and that rather elusive white picket fence. Even rarer than that fleeting common sense is the person who can actually pull it off with a single means of income. For those who can, more power to them. But what about the rest of us?

In the days of yore, when I joined the military, there was a myth of the 20-year retirement. However, less than a year before 9/11, I got fed up and wanted to do something more. Oh, how my superiors regaled me with the tales of hanging up my uniform after 20 years with the ability of drawing a pension, just sitting on a beach and sipping coffee for the rest of my life.

The funny thing was, I didn’t even like coffee back then…

There was a restlessness and refusal to go along with the traditional program. I realized most of my superiors were working on a subsequent marriage and generally didn’t have much joy beyond what the military offered. I also saw that many of them lost their way after finally hanging up their rank insignias. I wanted more.

It was the desire for more that sent me walking through the snow to the recruiter’s office in the first place. That need for something more also kept me on the move. I would eventually see that, though my hometown of Chicago is sprawling, the world is a lot bigger.

Funny that, when you ask a kid what (s)he wants to be, (s)he’ll rifle off all kinds of interesting stuff. There is a purity in their thinking that begins to cloud as we reach and begin to trudge through the rugged terrain of adulthood. Asking that child what (s)he wanted to be after duking it out with the cold, hard reality of school loans, car payments, and utility bills might get you a blank stare–especially if they have kids of their own. It is quite common that most of us have modified or even forgotten about our dreams. Even worse, they get put on a back burner to be procrastinated about because of the fear of failure.

Frazzled, pot-bellied, dissatisfied, and more concerned about the latest reality show (only as proof that famous people are even more dysfunctional and fucked up), they are surviving on a treadmill. Of course, because it’s on TV makes it true. And, with the rich and famous being subjected to constant scandal and drinking/drugging themselves into a living coma, we wonder why we should ever reach beyond our combined blue collar existence.

I am no salesman but, what if I told you that you could still achieve many of your dreams by applying some uncommon sense and sacrificing some of that TV time? What if I told you that, no matter how old you are, you could very well recreate yourself? What if I said the nagging dream that refuses to die, though it has gathered cobwebs in your mental library, could still be within your grasp?

I wanna encourage you to reach beyond the sort of zombification that stunts your potential and makes you downplay your talents. Stay tuned and we’ll take this journey together, not to the Twilight Zone, but to a new way of thinking called Hu$tle Logic.

A warning is in order, though. Being an old salt and something of a curmudgeon, I tend to cuss like a sailor. That’s because I was one. So, if you can deal with my informal tone, a bit of twisted humor, and some colloquialisms that may make your Sunday school teacher gasp, you are more than welcome to join me on this bumpy ride to freedom.