That shitty feeling when your wildest fantasies come true

An alternate universe where my fantasies come true...unfortunately

Hello CouldbeWorsers,

Things are getting a little out of control heat-wise in Bangkok. I wish very dearly for the rain gods to come back from whatever vacation they’ve all gone to. In the meantime, I find cafes with welcoming air conditioning and continue to write as the world burns.

Somewhere in the Italian Riviera….

I recently stumbled across a new German word which gets me.

Luftmensch

It translates literally into “air person” which is a delightfully blunt (I mean German) way of saying someone is a bit too much of a dreamer. 

I am an air person. 

I have let more than my fair share of coffees grow cold with my head in the clouds.

For instance, even as a full-grown (and often surprisingly employed) adult, I have thought about:

• The pros and cons of various superpowers. I have made a detailed analysis of how I’d use these powers in case I find myself waking up one day with them. For instance, being invisible is fun but it’s quite a tricky superpower to pull off anything interesting.

• Being able to see Earth from space someday, perhaps as a space tourist. The deep spiritual experience of being able to see the blue orb we live in and reflect on it is enormously appealing to me.

• Driving an F1 car on an F1 track someday. Or at least, attempting to.

And so on.

Carried away by these dreams, sometimes I wonder how it would be to live these experiences and feel bad that I may never live most of these fantasies. And then the cynic inside me reassures me that it is for the best.

Don’t meet your heroes; Don’t let your wildest fantasies come true.

Because, I know. If one day these came true and I lived them, the actual experience would be so terrible and I’d have lost the pure escape I had when it was still a fantasy.

Here are a few notes from alternate universes where some of my more persistent fantasies came true for me and it….wasn’t good.

Driving a Porsche 911 Carrera, with the top down, on a winding mountainside road that overlooks a spectacular ocean in the Italian Rivera.

Seems like the whole of Italy got the same memo to head up this mountain today. Wasn’t I supposed to be cruising with my hair waving in the breeze? Instead, I am moving at a snail’s pace traffic.

It all looked so good when Jeremy Clarkson was zooming on these roads. Where are my drone shots and my soundtrack?  Guess what, I can’t even play music in this car because it cannot connect to Bluetooth on my phone. 

My calves hurt. My shoulders hurt. Heck, even my butt seems to hurt and I squirrel around in the seat trying to find an ideal position.

It’s cooking inside the car like a rice pot on this hot day. I wish I’d brought a hat or at least kept the top down. My sweaty back is now stuck to the leather seats and I may have to donate a layer of my skin to the upholstery.

The sky isn’t as blue and the sea looks meh. I pass by a small bar on the hillside where a bunch of tourists sit with chilled beer staring at the sea. I just wish I was sitting there instead of living this so called fantasy. 

Going up in a rocket above Earth’s atmosphere to look at Earth from space and wonder at the marvel of our existence

The uneasiness of the trip is making me nauseous.

As I’m strapped to the seat in this tin can, I wonder how safe this is. Did the crazy billionaire just jokingly say “astala vista” to us?

Panic seizes me as we’re all strapped in and the doors close. Then the rumble starts. Oh god! Is it supposed to shake worse than a Bangkok TukTuk?

Something explodes and I feel the weight of several elephants pressing on me. Are we going up? I conclude that we must be going up because I haven’t heard any screams yet. The bone-rattling journey never seems to end.

Something smells weird. No, can’t be…really? Has someone…..shit their pants? Inside the recycled air, the smell gains momentum, like a shit avalanche. 

Eventually, everything slows down and I feel the sensation of floating. Everyone’s unbuckling and floating to the windows. But my buckle won’t come off! I am increasingly agitated - I have come all this way for this moment. But it’s stuck! “Help,” I gasp, like a child in a car seat. The man next to me tries to help and fiddles around but even he can’t do it.

“Sorry!” he says and goes back to his window.

Out there, if I can get to a bloody window, is the blue orb, the one Carl Sagan promised would change my whole perception of life. But all I can see are the orbs of five people’s asses, arranged in a semi-circle in front of me as they all peer outside through the tiny windows. I am stuck to the chair in a dark tin can many miles above Earth. I can’t wait to get back down and plonk myself on the couch at my home in front of the TV. 

Owning an artsy boutique cafe + bookstore in a beautifully scenic spot

I feel a little under the weather but the shop needs to be opened. There is more crowd in today than normal and I find myself working with the barista to support the extra crowd. My body aches like I ran the Ironman yesterday. No one told me running a cafe was this hard.

“You’re wifi is so slow!” complains one of those Instagram girls. A customer is hogging the billing asking for an explanation of what every coffee on the menu is. A child is screaming. The girl I employ to man the counter called in sick today and so I stand there all day.

The imported espresso machine needs servicing. The constant whoosh and gurgle day after day of the machine is driving me slightly nuts. Someone breaks a glass. I need to go clean up the mess the idiot made.

In the little bookstore at the back, the termites are spreading! Yesterday, I saw a lot of powder on one of the shelves. I need to pull down all the shelves and redo them this weekend. It’s going to be at least a week-long project. I’d have to cancel the trip I was planning. The bathroom sink doesn’t drain and that needs taking care as well.  

I visualize the days when I used to be that customer in these shops tapping away on my laptop, blissfully imagining that owning a cafe would be so glamorous. 

An unknown rich relative suddenly leaves me with wealth in hundreds of millions

I have been cooped up in rooms with lawyers, accountants, and tax people who seem to have emerged from the woodwork. I am suddenly being investigated by authorities and am supposed to spend money lobbying the right people. My calendar, blissfully empty until then except on days when I wanted to feel productive so I’d add calendar events like “Take a nap” and “Rehydrate with a beer” is now suddenly filled with meeting after meeting running the affairs and managing the money.

Apparently, there is a short-term cash-flow issue that I may need to do a full restructuring of the estate. I rapidly google to find what any of these terms mean. The men in suits tell me that I just can’t run away from this and that I need to take things to their logical conclusion. My Netflix binge queue remains unwatched and I no longer have time to write or travel. I cry myself to sleep wishing I had never been left with this wealth. 

I have a bestseller book and I become super famous

Sweet life. Nothing wrong with this dream, like, at all.

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Do you have a wild fantasy that you dream about frequently? Let me know in the comment so I can shittify it for you

Could be Worse,

Tyag