CTRL; ALT & HER

Dream big or go home

Present (08, May 2019)

In a word surrounded by cameras, feeds and twits we seem to in be a permanent big brother of expectations where everyone seem to have their own opinion about what is the best for us. Mums tend to feed children with unrealistic expectations, while friends define all sorts of different acceptable cool behaviours (this is if any kids still say the word cool nowadays) and in between this we are asked since the age of 6 what do we want to be when we grow up. Well, in this case, I suppose I was my mums biggest disappointment... When put front to front with my future I would always say: When I grow up I want to work in Tesco cash desk, that was  until I knew the finance desk and decided that my dream was to be a secretary. I suppose that you can say that I always looked for a job with a meaning, I wanted a purpose, to work with people and to do something for them. Nowadays in my job, as a warehouse manager my purpose is different. Still work close to people and delivering a service, but I managed to get a pay raise from my daydreaming as a kid.

 In the other hand, Nadia had grown up in a family where cash flow wasn't as regular as desired. She would use clothes and shoes that were passed on from her sisters or cousins. In school, her friends or those who she thought she could call friends, would call her trailer park trash girl and by then she would only put her head down and ignore them in hope they would get tired of this game. 

Since a young  age she had bigger dreams than everyone else in her family. They were too big to the small mentality people she was surrounded by. When she was 16 she got her first job in a small café. She used to finish school at 3pm and work 4 hours a day from Friday to Monday. By then she was intelligent enough to know she had to hide her money in different places, so that no one would find it. She had learn early that her family didn't know how to manage money as she did. Her mum would spend any  pocket money in cigarettes and magazines or cheap clothes, while her dad would grab any overtime opportunity to bring more money back to the family. Everyday after school she would come home to her mum sitting down in sofa, in her best clothes (cheap imitations of branded clothes she would always aspire to have), reading one of her gossip magazines, with a champagne glass of juice with ice and smoking  cigarettes. In months when her dad would manage to do some extra work and her mother would find in her self to do something different, she would always order some take away food for her and the kids. This would make her feel like a glamour Hollywood lady who had dinner brought home to her and that would be enough to make her happy. Nadia, in the other hand, wasn't like that. Against all odds she wanted to study, to work helping people, to leave the place where she had grown up and never look back. With time she managed to have another part time job in the local library. The money wasn't great but in combination with her second job she manage to save a thousand and three hundred euros  by September. She knew what she wanted and at this point she could almost touch it.