Living the Waking Dream

Living the Waking Dream…

by Drew Bankston

I don’t always write. Well, I do write a lot, but it’s not how I support my family, yet. My regular job is as an Asset Protection Detective in a department store. What that means is that I do my best to prevent people from walking out with merchandise that they haven’t paid for. The biggest question that I get from people when I tell them what I do is, “Are you very busy?” My answer is always the same, “yes”.

It’s amazing but someone steals in the store everyday. I don’t always catch everyone, but I do catch many and most are prosecuted. The other day there were two women in my store. The entire scenario is a long story, but I’ll keep it short. These two women were working together. They had a bunch of kid’s clothes and some men’s activewear. They also had a stroller and a three month old baby. They took all of the clothes into a fitting room and came out with nothing but the stroller. I looked in the fitting room and there was nothing in there but some empty hangers. Either they were great magicians or shoplifters. I chose to believe the second choice.

As I would do, I stopped them as they exited the store and asked for our merchandise back. The woman pushing the stroller became very verbally abusive, tried to run me over with the stroller and refused to cooperate. Now, here’s what really got to me. She stepped to the side of the stroller and picked up her baby and yelled at me to just take the clothes. There were no clothes in the stroller. I again told her that she needed to return the stolen property. At this point she reached down under the stroller and retrieved a backpack stuffed full of clothes and threw it at me, knocking me backwards. She and her friend then ran. She used her baby to protect herself. That really irritated me as a parent. Not only was she mad at me for stopping her and recovering our merchandise, which she obviously felt entitled to, but she put a small baby at risk.

What is wrong with people? She tried to take almost $800 worth of clothing, probably to sell it to someone else. 

I work for a living. It’s not a glamorous job and sometimes not very rewarding. I also write and hope someday, that it will be my main source of income. I write because I love to entertain, educate and make people feel good. I have bills to pay and a family to support. I don’t steal from others. I’m honest and no matter how bad things get, I find ways to make it work without resorting to thievery or possibly hurting my children! I love my family.

I believe in helping others. I love to make people smile and laugh, and I believe others should do the same. It doesn’t cost anything and it sure makes other people feel good. Everyone goes through bad times, but those bad times don’t last forever. With a little help, encouragement and a pat on the back, we could all go so much farther. I know that someday my writing will put me in a position where I can help so many others. I hope that, in some way, it does now. Do what you can to at least put a smile on the face next to you. It might come back around when you need it the most!

Crazy Little Thing Called...

Crazy Little Thing Called...

A Crazy Little Thing Called……

By Drew Bankston

Love. It’s everywhere we look and every place we go. It permeates our popular music. It’s in television commercials and is used to sell a myriad of products. We have an entire day devoted to it. We try to promote it between ourselves to make the world a better place. We share it with everyone and find those special people to share it more deeply with. There is always one person, however, that we tend to forget. One of the most important people in our lives. The one and only person without whom we would never be able to survive. We sometimes forget to love ourselves!

As individuals, we are the hardest person to forgive when it comes to, well, just about anything. So many people look at who they are and either want to change or wish that they had changed a long time ago. If we attempt to change and are unsuccessful, we chastise ourselves and become, many times, sullen and withdrawn. We are our own most powerful critics. Is this the way we should be?

We tend to forgive others of their shortcomings, so why would we not do the same for ourselves? It’s important for us to treat ourselves as good or better than we treat others.

Raising our opinions of ourselves is one of the most critical things that we can do. How can we treat others with respect, with love or kindness if we can’t do the same with ourselves? Make it a goal today to learn to make you the most important person in your life so that you can more effectively treat others the best possible and make the world the best place ever, to live.

All You Have to Do, is...

All You Have to Do, is…

By Drew Bankston

Dream. We all have dreams. Some of them become passions. Others fade with time and become forgotten memories that will be brought up to grandkids later in life as something that we wanted to have come to into reality, but for whatever reasons, they never did.

I have a dream, which is huge to me. It’s a dream that encompasses numerous other smaller dreams. Over the past five years I’ve worked on this dream. Being human, I haven’t always done everything that I could, everyday, to reach my dreams and goals. Lately, I’ve been more focused on where I want to be and how I want to get there. My big dream has become much more important to me.

Over time, my dream has evolved. At one time, my dream was to be a published author. I’ve reached that dream now, having published twelve books and working on five more right now. Now my dream is to become an author in demand. I look forward to the day when I have a following of people who anticipate my next book. Right now, I’m working on how to do that. My dream also includes allowing my wife to be able to do whatever she wants, whether it’s working or not.

It’s very strange to me how this has to come to pass. I’ve never been one to brag about myself or what I do, but I’m finding out that first and foremost, I have to be my number one fan. I love my stories, and my characters and I love to share them with people. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about money, but it’s about the love of writing and sharing my words with others. So, you might ask, what has made this dream become more important? It’s easy to explain.

It was five and a half weeks ago that I suddenly developed double vision. On a recent visit to the eye doctor, I was told that my vision has improved a small amount. I can move my right eye and additional five degrees. I’m not really certain what that means, but in reality, I’m not seeing much better than I was before that visit. In fact, most of today it has seemed like it’s been worse. Being a writer with double vision is tough. My eyes get tired very quickly trying to focus on the screen. My dream is still my dream and I wonder what will happen to that dream should my vision never improve.

 So over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying harder, taking risks, reading when I can about how to make this a reality. I will make this dream come true. I will find ways to share these things with you.

In the meantime, I encourage all of you to please look at your dreams. Figure out how to make them come true. Don’t wait until something happens that either forces you to act, or makes you give up. Dreams are your wishes that have the ability to become reality, but they need your help to do so. I’m working hard, daily, to make mine a reality. I believe that you can make yours come true as well!

Ready to Fall?

Ready to Fall?

by Drew Bankston

I turned around and September snuck up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and smiled really big when I turned back. Where the heck did the year go? In the store where I work, they started putting out some Christmas items. Then I realized that in three weeks fall begins. Fall! What happened to summer? The year, as always, seems to have flown by, leaving me to wonder along with several millions of others, where the year went.

It was one of those kind of days when I took a look back to see what I’ve accomplished over the past eight months. Normally, I do this at the end of the year and look back on the entire year, but today I told myself that if I wasn’t happy with my accomplishments thus far, I would have an opportunity to do more before the year’s end. So, as I looked back, I found that I wasn’t disappointed with my accomplishments as much as I was wondering why I didn’t do more. I did quite a bit, don’t get me wrong, but for some reason I felt as if I should have done more. More time with my family. More time promoting my business. More time writing. More time smiling more. Wait a minute, it turns out that what I was really wanting was more time.

I actually did everything that I wanted to do to date, but I just wanted more time. I guess that’s something that we all want. That really made me think. Time is a fixed thing. So what to do? The only thing that I could think of was to accept the fact that I only have a limited amount of time and that perhaps, I should work on my time management abilities.

For me, when I want to change something about myself, I write about it. I figure that if I need to work on something, there’s at least one other person out there who wants to work on the same thing. So, I’m beginning to work on my time management and put my own spin on it. I’m not going to make it a book, but I’ll post some small things that helped me to reach my goal of time management. So, if you’re ready to figure this out and get a few tips and hints of what’s working for me and might work for you, then stay with me. Check out my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/AuthorDrewBankston for the weekly installments of time management tips. In the meantime, get ready to fall into Fall!