When do you stop dreaming and start dealing with reality?

We all sat in our 1st grade class and every body answered the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You'd always hear doctor, lawyer, mommy, and the other things kids dream of when they're young. I always wanted to be a race car driver and spent all my young life trying to find a way to get into racing, with the dream intact. I was ignorant to the whole racing culture, thought all you had to do was want it, and it would come. After all, that's what they told us in school. Just dream it, and it will come. I bought into that. Boy was that a mistake!

As we moved closer and closer to graduating high school, some of my friends were planning for college, 4-year colleges, and I thought that was something I could never afford, so I didn't give it much thought. I went to Florence-Darlington Tech to pursue a degree in CNC Machine Tool, and finished that up with the plans to move to Charlotte to get a job building engines in a Cup shop. During that time, I worked a 3rd shift job as a welder at a plant in Bishopville and went to school from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. I drive from Bishopville when I got off at 7 a.m. and slept about 20 minutes in the parking lot at school until class started. I left class and got home around 3:30, which didn't lend much time for sleep.

I did that for about a year then I realized that this lifestyle was not for me. I was exhausted and at that point, all my life consisted of was work, school, then working all weekend racing. I decided it was time for a change. By the way, I still wanted to drive a racecar, so I took a step toward that. I paid $2,000 for a street stock car from a guy in Darlington. I thought I was on the way! I raced that thing for a few months before I realized that dream of making a living out of driving might not ever happen. I didn't stop racing, I built myself a brand new late model a few years ago and still have it, waiting for the day I get a raise to afford to race it! It takes money, it takes time, and it takes more than I ever realized to make it in racing. It began to set in that I needed to develop a skill that I could sell, a skill that I could make a career out of. I thought I'd be creative, so I thought why not find a career where I could mix racing with something I'm good at; running my big 'ole mouth!

It was in 2002 when I discovered the financial aid office at the University of South Carolina. A financial aid counselor educated me about the whole system of borrowing money for school as a way to get in. I took the entrance exams, filled out the paper work, then signed my life away on a financial aid form. I was in school, the first one in my family to ever go to a 4-year university. I was determined to make this happen. I wanted to one day report on, or broadcast races. Then in December of 2005, I graduated from USC with a B.A. in Electronic Journalism and Mass Communications. I knew then that I just finished something of meaning, I put myself through school. That feeling of accomplishment was a dream that came true, a dream I never realized I had inside. It felt great.

So, here I am now. I'm 28 years old and in the final year of a 3-year television contract at a station I grew up watching. I've done some amazing things during my time here. I've covered stories that I never thought I would ever get to be a part of. I've watched people be sentenced to life in prisons, last week I watched a jury hand a man the death penalty. I've covered two Daytona 500s, stuck by a grieving mother as search crews and divers combed the Waccamaw River looking for her oldest son only to find his dead body in the water several days later. I've told stories about life tragedies, and I've told stories about a soldier making it home from Iraq just in time to see his little girl's birth. In my two short years here, I've moved from reporting in Lumberton, back to my home in the Pee Dee, then on to our top shop in Myrtle Beach. I get to lead newscasts with the top story several nights throughout the week. This job I've got now is a dream come true, again another dream that I never knew I had inside me.

That's the reality. You can spent a lifetime dreaming, but there comes a time when you ave to say enough. You have to buckle down and get with reality. Life isn't as easy as they tell us in school. Life is full of hard work and unexpected changes. My new dream is to make it to the SPEED channel, or FOX as a racing reporter. I would tell you that secretly I dream of covering NASCAR on ESPN, but I'd hate to get laughed at! You've got to find something you're good at, then exploit it. Work hard at your dreams, but be realistic. Dreaming is fun and is a great way to pass time, but be careful not to spend too much time on it. Before you know it, you've dreamed your life away when you should have been taking care of business.

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