Creating Vision
By Nyles Pollonais
To Make It In Middle America
I’ve worn so many hats this year. Using gratitude as a compromise, I saw it as a good thing. I told myself I needed the experience. I needed to learn how the everyday man lived, as if I didn’t study this/know this. For some reason, I taught myself it was good to struggle. I fought crappy employment structures and people in high places, all the while sacrificing my career elevation. But, how could I climb the corporate ladder when I was jumping from ladder to ladder? If anything, I was growing horizontally, but that wasn’t respected. It was looked down upon. “If this guy, who held two degrees couldn’t figure it out, something must be wrong with him.”
Gratitude. I told myself I’d be okay. I could figure it out. I got my education, so what else mattered? I remember one manager asking me (in response to telling them I had another interview) why I hadn’t gotten the job. “Is it because you asked for too much money?” She said it in spite, but I told her it was because I was vegan, and I couldn’t commit myself to working for a place that made, sold, and required the employees to “quality test” the meat. I remember asking for base pay in the gogo-joint, asking them for some kind of normality in a place that was anything but, even if I was bringing in the clientele and making the atmosphere palatable. I sent out tons of applications. I changed my resume. I searched for and received certifications, but every time I was denied. I began to wonder if it was a sign from God. Maybe, just maybe I was being led to something greater. I had to work for myself. I couldn’t afford to sell myself short.
It was beginning to weigh on me. I could hear the doubt and critique coming from close acquaintances who’d once jealoused me, now pitying me. It felt like a ton of boulders, but somehow I still found gratitude in the experience. Was it me, or was this an otherworldly thing? See while all this job dissatisfaction was happening, I was inheriting homes my family had built, I was growing spiritually and personally in a way I had not in years, and I was sharing and spreading love and knowledge to people I’d empathized with.
As the year comes to an end, I sit here with my 7th or 8th hat on, smiling through it all in disbelief. Someone told me that if I could make it in New York I could make it anywhere, but I don’t believe that anymore, because it’s not New York that’s the actual test. It’s middle America. This place is hell on wheels and to be honest, I don’t understand how people have made it through. The coping mechanisms, the depression, alcohol and drug addiction, the domestic violence and willful conspiracy theories, the jealousy of “friends,” the mass copycatting — it all makes sense. These are all symptoms of the same issue. Each time I look to wear a new hat, I always tell myself to never let the money change me, to never let the hustle culture change my thoughts, to always have God in mind, but all of this is contrary to the ethos of the everyday person. There is no love in this. There is no divine pathway in this. It’s all a means to an end. No one woke up one day and said, I want to work until I die, because if not I’d be homeless. And it continues to get worse.
I tend to wonder if the elderly feel bad, because they know. They have to know this is not the America they decided to be part of., It’s not, and at times I blame them. But how could they know better? Someone above them told them like they told us to go be one thing and get paid for that. Be the best cog in that wheel, and you and your family will be taken care of — from the military to the hospital, same shit. I can see it in my aunts and uncles, slowly feeling less and less worthy, knowing it’s not just their age making them less valuable even with all the time spent and given to the corporations they worked for. I saw this in my mother too, but way before, specialized and discarded as the 2008 recession took our home and our hope. So while I blame them, I still have to understand, and that’s my education acting as solace. Speaking to my therapist, I asked her what was normal? What could be a normal thought process in a system that encourages this type of behavior? She didn’t have the answer, and in fact she’d been asking her colleagues in the office the same thing. I have yet to know if they’ve come to an answer, but that’s not their job. Their job is only to listen to the questions, not answer them.
I sit here at 5AM preparing to drop this anti-capitalist piece to a world that eats that shit up. Will this be taken seriously, and actually digested when the next person is eager to sell their mother on Tik Tok if it means that they’ll have a chance to taste the good life? We have an obligation as educated individuals to change the narrative. Every time I wear a new hat, I remind myself that going to college was not a fun endeavor or something I did for frivolities. The education I, we, received was meant to be spread to those who will never see those ivy gates. Every time I wear a hat that doesn’t align with my degrees, I tell myself that even if I can’t work in the profession I had hoped to, I can work with the people around me. Teach them, share with them, guide them, in hopes that maybe the right tune will hit the right ear at the right time. That’s why I find gratitude in these hats. I meet new people and share love. They may not be the Instagram-famous or the rich, but they’re my people. They are everyday folks. They too have lost loved ones. They too are struggling to hold onto the last pieces of generational wealth left in their families. They too, are looking for a smile in the clouds, because this shit is dark. I truly wonder where I’d be if I didn’t hit it early on. I look at my friends and family, and I wonder why me, why not them, but then gratitude… I wonder if they were in my shoes would they understand.
From the outside in, I’m the guy who’s not doing enough, who’s had everything, and still won’t make it work. I’m conflicted, motherfu**er. Those educated in medicine work in hospitals. Those certified in tech work for data companies. The engineers fix our machines, and political science students go to law school to work for big finance (?). That’s the easy way out, but with this level gratitude and love comes consciousness. And there is no way in hell I can consciously work as a cog in this bullshit ass wheel when Bob Marley was damn near my uncle, visiting my home every weekend with a plate of curry chicken and community love. I can’t. That’s my choice, my conflict. I jump from hat to hat when I realize I can’t work for someone and stay quiet, I feel like I’m wasting my time. I barely connect with people my age, because they’re running after something that’s not possible, or at least just trying to make it. So what is there for a person like me?
A political science student, education master, works to dismantle the political system and current ideology, even if that goes against the capitalist nature. See, unlike many, I didn’t go to school to work, I went to school to learn, as contradictory as that seems today. This is an ode to the everyday person: I feel you n*gga. Seeing the scammers around you, watching the drug dealers profit, listening to the mega church pastors tell you every week that you gon’ make it, while scraping pennies to buy that piece of beef to make that one dish for your niece like your grandma did — I feel you n*gga, and I rebuke the idea that New York is the real test. Nah, it’s to make it in Middle America that’s the real beast. Can you get out of the mud while maintaining your morals and peace of mind? Can you step back from the bullshit, and see how it’s impacting your nephew who just started calling the women who raised him, “bitches?” Can you see the humanity in the homeless person who stopped asking for money because they can’t stoop any lower?
All this, before I began to create my vision.
Creating Instead of Finding Vision
By the time I had gotten ready to leave graduate school, I had entered one of my final elective courses — leadership as coaching. It was a course taught by a famous former University of Michigan basketball coach who used his life lessons to guide students on their journeys. His life lessons would grant us the tools necessary to pursue our passions.
It was already assumed that every person sitting in those types of courses, at that level of post-secondary education, had created a vision. Where they were was only a stepping stone, a result even, of the path they had set out. Getting to graduate school by 23 and finishing by 26 to attain this job at this firm will set me in motion to get x, y, z by the time I’m 35 for the financial comfort I hope to gain by 40. A premeditated definite path for a life that seemed anything but certain.
I gulped in the moment when I realized what was going on — not in the course alone, or even at that University, but everywhere around me. Almost everyone had a vision and a step by step goal for what they wanted to achieve. Having this made their days easier. It made their B+ acceptable. It made their time spent studying worth it, because soon enough, they would get what they want. But even outside the university, vision is what grants most the acceptance of this bullshit people call life. Because, as long as they have the end, they can deal with the means. I wonder though, for people like myself, who have trouble finding vision and often end up looking lost in this, what do we do? What happens to us?
Money is a simple vision for most. In fact it is the first vision presented, and often the most realistic possible. Money rules the world, and money affords comfort and lifestyle. So why wouldn’t I go after the money? Rap lyrics, famous Youtubers, Tik Tokers, and others all present us with this image — a glamorous, ritzy image of wealth that makes it seem almost immature, and idiotic not to make money one’s vision. I challenge these easy-bake visions and question the nature of our reality in my response. I don’t want to know why money is the first vision and the only vision for most. I want to know if it would be possible to encourage others to seek other visions for their lives, making money not a vision but a tool.
I have had trouble finding my vision, but I realized that unlike jobs or money it is not something you search for, it’s something you create. The same way in which the brain creates the reality we see by interpreting light waves that interact with optic nerves, it is our responsibility to create a vision out of the environment, education, and spiritual impulses that we receive. While I try to create a vision for myself, and in-turn the world around me, I use the experiences that I have gained to know what I like, but more importantly what I do not like. The latter acts more like a guide keeping me from depression, feelings of inadequacy, and lack of fulfillment, while the former provides me the tools I can use to build my vision — not being the vision itself. I love making music, writing articles, and painting. Does this mean that my life’s vision is to be a musician, writer, or artist? Probably not. What it does show me is that creativity, freedom of expression, and communication are tools that would serve the person I am in expressing my vision to the best of my human ability.
I find that I harbor a slight jealousy for those who have seemingly figured it all out. Those who decided early on to do one thing and stick to it. But even in that jealousy, I have fear. Not for all of those who choose that path, only the enlightened ones I have come across. I fear one day they will wonder what would have happened if they would have spent more time working on their vision rather than trying to go after that one thing. It seriously concerns me, so much so, I have no problem seeming out of touch with reality while I attempt to create my vision.
Job after job, study after study, and business after business, I always return to the same point — is this in line with me? And once I find it is not, it’s the same song and dance that would lead me to leaving the position until the money got low enough to force me into the same song and dance once again. Why is it taking me so long to find a vision to act on? I can’t answer that now. I remember wanting to drop out of my graduate program at least three times, realistically. My concerns were centered around overqualification, waste of time, but most importantly vision. Did the degree I set out to attain contribute to the vision I had set for myself, or was it something that I had told my mother I would to do contribute to the vision she had for my life? Losing both my mother and grandfather, it is almost like my preconceived vision had been taken from me. I sit here wondering whether or not that was a blessing in disguise. See, I know many people who are not living by their own visions, but the visions of those around them, the visions of their race, the visions of their sex, or the visions of their nationality. Could I have been set free from the vision that matters the most — the vision of family?
Somehow as my Sunday night wrapped up, I ended up on a Unsung video of DJ Quik, which led me to the Nipsey Hussle documentary. Nipsey had been close enough to greatness his entire life. He had deals, businesses, connections, networks, and all of that. Right on the precipice of him solidifying his vision for himself and for those around him, he was sadly taken from this world. His vision had shifted from “hustle here and there to maintain,” to a concise plan where every piece had a place and would lead to greater returns for the overall vision — the marathon. Instead of his hustle being point A to point B, it became an entire quantum equation in which every part, either wave or particle, added into the ultimate question and answer of what “the hustle” is. This is an example of a vision worth seeing, in my opinion. It stands so large that you wake up with an intention of what is set out in front of you knowing that the things you hope to accomplish set in motion a chain of events grander than you.
I was asked, “What matters more to you — vision or happiness?” Vision, without a doubt. Even if I encounter sadness, despair, loss, grief, and anxiety while creating my vision, the feelings of happiness, joy, completion, actualization, manifestation, and ability are maximized 10 fold. Happiness is getting a paycheck every Friday, vision is feeling the sun on your skin on a cool winter evening for a brief moment before it sets going into the night knowing that you will feel it again in the morning and that the summer will bring more. See, I used to think I was indecisive, but that’s not the case. I was simply without vision. There are so many quotes I have encountered on my journey of multiple hats that almost seem as if they were sung, written, spoken, or painted just for me that I have come to the point of realizing that the art of creating my vision, is larger than a white picket fence, 2.5 children, two German cars type of standard. If anything, I must live by the vision I will create for myself. A vision so grand, I don’t even know where to start, but I have recognized some of the tools that benefit me and where I’m going. It is not one tech company or a start up. It is not a five-year stint as a lawyer, it is not a PhD from a prestigious university. Though those things may come and act as outlets for the vision, that is not the end all be all.
Having the time to question vision, is in itself a privilege. Maybe, I have no vision at all. Maybe, just maybe there is no grand scheme or reason for me to be here on this planet, no divine purpose, no intent. Maybe those who search for vision are the unfortunate ones who really did not understand the assignment when in school, a painful reckoning if true. Better yet, am I being foolish to believe that I have such time to ask such a question? Does anyone, for that matter? Howard Buffet, son of one of the wealthiest men on the planet, chose not to follow his father’s footsteps, but instead to pursue farming. Acknowledging the fact that he says he did not know his father was rich growing up, he decided (after multiple short stints in and out of college) being with the earth would be his goal, his vision in essence. Sure, he’s got a hell of a safety net, but he crafted his own. Contrary to popular belief, I say find the vision and the money will come.
Every job I work, and every time I meet someone new, I look for hints at creating vision. Small visions, large visions, avant garde visions all have keys into the mind of the human and to how that person brought something to life from nothing. How they created a game, if you will, with rules, outcomes, standards, expectations, wins, and losses. A vision.
Meet the Writer
Nyles Pollonais graduated from The University of Michigan in 2021 with a Masters of Arts in Design and Technology for Learning. He is a writer, entrepreneur, musician, and future educator who spends most of his time focusing on content creation and current events. He is currently developing his digital presence and promoting his first EP titled “First,” streaming soon on all platforms.
