Last night I was on the table enjoying another awesome massage from my friend Dan and we started talking about blazing your own trail and arriving at the point when you know that you are living your dream.

You see Dan is living his dream right now, but it wasn’t always like that.

I first met Dan at a friend’s party. He arrived dressed all funky with his hair in two buns, eyeliner and a cool hat. He was fabulous and fun. He was a DJ and was into photography, and like to go frolic in the woods.  But he was not very happy over all. He worked a 9-5 job in an office where he made good money, but he was bored to death. He could not be his fabulous self at work. It was slowly sucking the soul right out of him. He dreaded Monday mornings when he would have to leave his awesome fun weekend life and go back to work.

Dan really wanted to do body work, hang out with his peeps, play music and take pictures. He left his boring day job and got a job at a local healing practice. That was cool, but he was not really making enough money to live on. He worried about money all the time and whether he would have to go back to working in an office. He felt some pressure from his family around getting serious and getting a real job. On some level he bought into this idea and struggled with the desire to ‘be responsible’ versus doing meaningful work. He wanted to start building his own private clients list because he knew that that was where the money was, but he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. He dragged his feet around making business cards, and had all kinds of reasons not to go for it full force.

Then he decided to get a tattoo. This was not Dan’s first tattoo, but all the others were placed so that they could be easily hidden for work. He had always wanted to get something that wound up his forearm, but never did because he believed that it would prevent him from getting a job because he could not cover it up. For a long time he felt limited by this, and on this day he decided to say “Fuck It!”.  The timing was right, and the inspiration was there, and he went ahead and got a beautiful vine spiraled up his forearm.

This tattoo was more than another beautiful adornment on a sexy guy. This was Dan’s way of throwing down the gauntlet and claiming the life that he wanted. Getting this tattoo was his way of saying “I am all in”.  In his mind there was no going back.

It is not surprising that over the next year Dan’s list of private clients grew, and he had opportunities to make money doing all the things he loved. Last night we were talking about how kick-ass his life is right now. He has the freedom to do everything that he loves. His commitment paid off. He is living his dream! Rock on Dan!

I am curious if you have a gauntlet of your own to throw down?