Hollywood! Here I…will politely sit down and enjoy some popcorn.

So…four years ago at this time, I had a dream of becoming a multimedia superstar. Well, maybe not superstar. But I did have a strong plan to move to California and I told my family that in 2010, I would at the very least somehow be in the Kodak Theatre watching the event live.

Given that I don’t live in Cali and am not a multimedia superstar, it’s looking less and less like I will be at the Kodak and more like I will be at a Kinko’s, making copies or something along those lines.

And you know, that’s not really such a bad thing.

To say that my original plan to move out to California was brash and not well-thought-out would be a major understatement. I knew almost no one out there and wound up relying on several people to move out there with me, all of whom eventually jumped ship for one reason or another. I had no job lined up (other than a possible stint as a dance instructor). I had no true idea where I wanted to live, just that it would be somewhere in L.A. And most of all, I had way too much confidence in my artistic abilities (voice acting, character acting, drums) and life experiences, and never really took the time to inject any realism into my ideas.

Those of you who were around know that I was rocked from every angle right after I graduated and spent the next year-and-a-half in a basic mental hole, which I likely would’ve died in mentally save for a few special people (Go ahead and take a bow, I believe you know who you are). I can only imagine how bad that truly would have been had I not had my closest friends and family around to support me and see me through.

I am in a much better place life-wise now, even if mentally it may not feel that way at times. And skills-wise…not sure how much better my skills are getting, but they seem to be a bit better. Plus, I’ve since been on a national dating show, as well as in a couple of films, a couple of on-stage improv shows, a live voice-acting performance, paid to play live music, and may well even be in a nationally released DVD this year (still crossing my fingers that nothing goes weird on that, and my 10 seconds of fame stays alive). If you had told me four years ago that those things would happen, I would have happily taken it.

I may yet move out to Cali someday, and maybe I’ll even get to be in the audience at the Kodak Theatre. But until it does (and even if it never happens), I can still live my dreams and still do what I love to do.

And isn’t that a large part of what we all want anyhow?