Launch of Job Satisfaction Survey!

Yesterday (Christmas) marked the first official day of administering the Job Satisfaction Survey at the privately owned restaurant we work at. In total I got 6 surveys back, and a few were taken home...so hopefully I'll get those back too.

It's always amazing to me how sometimes you have to practically bribe people to take things like this, even though it's for THEIR benefit, and we're doing all the work (administering, evaluating, presenting the results). It seems as if they don't care about their job or life in general enough to take a quick little survey and be HONEST about their answers. The survey is, of course, voluntary and anonymous so they don't have to take it by any means, I just don't understand why they wouldn't.

Another thing I notice is that people so often say "And WHY are you doing this? You know you can't make any difference." I actually even got compared to Sisyphus, the mythological Greek king that was punished by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down again, forever. Basically this older-aged colleague of mine was saying it was pointless for me to try. How sad! (I have to say though, he did end up taking the survey and wishing me luck)

It's exactly that mentality that we're trying to evolve with Dreem Reality. I don't understand why people will remain in situations they are unhappy with (be them life, work, relationships, etc) without trying desperately to change them for the better. Why else are we living other than to live happy and fulfilled? We leave our human bodies TOO SOON to let our existence be so unhappy. Even if one believes we move on to "bigger and better things" when we die...why waste the time in this life doing things we don't like?

There are so many wonderful role models in human history who have proven that Change IS possible. Even if we don't devote our entire lives to a certain single cause like Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Amma, and the like - we can still make significant changes in our OWN lives and the lives of the people we love. In fact, we're the only ones that actually can make that difference! You don't have to make it into the history books to be a hero - to yourself or someone else.

SO! That was the experience of the first round of surveys at work. I go in again today and hope to get some more filled out, as well as learn some more lessons.

Oh, before I close out...I want to send a very special THANK YOU out into the Universe to those few people that took the survey in enthusiasm - It is so beautiful to see that that life spark does exist in people. It's that enthusiasm that fuels my own.

~Dani

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Our Role Models for today's blog

Current Projects

Now that the introduction is out of the way, I want to jabber on a bit about what projects are presently in the works for Dreem Reality.


I. CREATION

Firstly, we have to make this thing official. As of today (December 23rd, 2008) we are not yet a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We've got the Nolo book on how TO do it, and we've even gotten the Articles of Incorporation written. It's just a matter of putting the rest of the pieces of the puzzle in place and then sending the forms out to the appropriate offices. Also, we're wanting to wait until the new year and ultimately new TAX year. I don't want to have to file some silly taxes based on two weeks of operation in 2008...nooooo thank you!

Also part of the creation of Dreem Reality is THIS! The blog. Oh, and on December 17th we purchased the domain name for our in-the-works website: www.DreemReality.org (presently it wont show you anything, but hopefully by the time someone actually stumbles across this blog it will have some goodies on it!). I'll keep an update on it's progress as well.


II. Ariel Coatney

Ariel is an incredible musician that just so happens to be our 17 year old roommate. I'd have to say we are her most dedicated fan club and border on obsession over her angelic voice and acoustical skills (she is recording her newest song in her room now as I type). Recently she had an opening gig with a local band at 99 Bottles, a pleasant bar in Downtown Santa Cruz. Dreem Reality jumped into action to help create a Ariel-style marketing technique. We brainstormed and finally came up with the idea to create business-card-lighters. Then we created labels with her contact information and pretty picture to stick to lighters. I'm happy to say that we were able to hand out every single lighter at her gig on December 18th, 2008 - hopefully in the least her myspace and youtube accounts will get many more hits! It's a start at least! (Never be afraid to start small, that's where everything has to begin.)

If you'd like to check out Ariel, PLEASE do! I'm sure you'll be impressed:

Myspace: www.myspace.com/arielcoatneymusic
Youtube: ArielCoatney
Email: ArielCoatney@yahoo.com


III. Job Satisfaction Survey

When not writing blog after blog about Dreem Reality, I work at a beautiful, privately owned restaurant in Santa Cruz, California. As I had mentioned in the Introduction blog, my formal educational interests have to do with Job Satisfaction and Motivation. I have a strong belief that if we choose to work for a living that it is of extreme importance that we are happy with the work we do. After all, we usually are spending a large portion of our waking hours there and one could argue that our sense of self as well as our health and well being is directly influenced by the work we do. All important concepts to Dreem Reality.

So, I've decided to conduct a job satisfaction survey here. I just had the project approved by the owner last week and have set to work mass-printing the surveys. I had done this project once before at my previous place of work and the results were extremely intriguing and educational. I hope to improve upon my last attempt and perhaps have a real impact on the work environment.

One way I hope to do this is by having a Spanish version of the survey. A large portion of the employees there are primarily Spanish speaking, and every one of their opinions is extremely important. I am presently looking for someone to volunteer an hour or so of their time to translate this survey. If you or someone you know would be willing to do this, email us at DreemReality@gmail.com. (I'll even give you props on our project page, once we get that going!)

I'll keep you updated with how the project is going. I plan to launch the first batch of surveys tonight when I go in to work!

Those are the major projects for now, and we haven't even officially started yet! I'd say we were taking donations to help with things like buying the business-card-lighters and paper/ink for the surveys...but I don't think we can legally accept donations yet. So, just save those dollars up for the new year. It's our hope to have a paypal account up and running to accept those tax-exempt donations soon.

~Dani

To catch up! About Us...

HELLO!

This is the first official blog of Dreem Reality! How exciting! I wish we would have started the blog just a few weeks earlier to catch some of the fun things we have accomplished so far. But, I'm quite sure it's for a reason, and is absolutely perfect the way it is.

So, what is Dreem Reality? Honestly, we're still developing what it is, as every day we think of something NEW that the organization can encompass - what services it can offer, what lessons it can hope to teach, how it can inspire and motivate in another way. But for the sake of our sanity, yours, and of course posterity...here's what we have so far as an "about us":

Dreem Reality is a multi-purpose educational non-profit organization, with major focuses on self-development, goal-achievement, and motivation. Also a scholarship and special needs oriented charitable organization.

Through various methods we hope to provide people with the inspiration and tools to realize and actualize their Dreems. We'll do everything from providing a "Dreemer" moderated forum to network and explore your ideas in a loving and non-judgemental arena, to getting hands on with projects that will help you achieve your Dreem! All the while, we are achieving our OWN Dreems.

(How was that? Of course I know that dream is spelled with an "A" and not two "E"s, but we are changing the concept of what a dream is to dreem, which is in the logo: Dare Reason, Evolve Existence, Manifest Reality.)

Ok, so "What the heck is a 'Dreemer'?" you may be asking yourself or your inquiring neighbor reader. Well, do you have a Dreem? Are you on the path to making that Dreem a Reality? Well then you would be a Dreemer! Officially though, I suppose our Directors and Founders are presently two ladies: Dani and Phoenix. We're the two jumping in front of the cartoony world in our logo, and I am Dani.

A bit about me then...

I consider myself a long time Dreemer through my 24 years of life. Even though some of my Dreems have been a bit "out of the ordinary" to most people in society, I still went for them. That may sound a bit conceded, but to tell you the truth I am really proud of myself for pushing past those criticisms and doubts...and that has led me here! Even now people scoff at the idea of starting a non-profit with this focus, but again I've got to look past those scoffs and just go for it. That's the ONLY way to get what I want.

Anyway, what kind of Dreems have I accomplished?

I've done the college thing, which was always one of my goals (and yes was scoffed at by my more "alternative lifestyle" friends). I graduated from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi, with a Bachelors in Psychology. I love Psychology, it's like learning how to think...healthily. Then later I applied for and got accepted to San Jose State University for my Masters in Industrial Organizational Psychology with a focus in Job Satisfaction and Motivation. But I decided to step out of that program (for now at least) do go for my other Dreems (more on those later).

Probably the series of Dreems I'm most excited about achieving was the acquiring and conversion of a 33 foot long school bus into a veggie powered motor home named LaFonda Olive. This was one that a LOT of people put down - either it was too expensive, too dangerous, too unrealistic, or too much work. But as cliche as it sounds, it didn't stop us (myself and my fiance at the time). We gathered together our closest friends, named ourselves Earth Tribe, and went out into the community to get support for our Dreem. Eventually we got together enough money and motivation to buy the bus from an auction, pull out and rebuild the insides, and convert it to run on Straight Vegetable Oil. Then we traveled around central and eastern US.

As things tend to do, that Dreem spurred the creation of the next Dreem - to create a business that sells alternative energy products. While full time in college my fiance and I began our business called The Organic Mechanic. We ran it together for 3 years until I moved on to other things and he has continued to grow it in the past 2 years of my absence! He's definitely a Dreemer. (Check out his website www.TheOrganicMechanic.org if you'd like)

Some other Dreems I'm proud of are:

• Getting my Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do
• Going sky diving
  
• "Coming out" to friends, family, and the world about being a lesbian
• Continuously scratching my itch for traveling and adventure

Anyway, these are just some things about me...ONE of the Directors of Dreem Reality. I hope to get Phoenix to give a little intro of herself soon. Until then, HELLO! I think I'll probably post another blog or two about the progress we've made so far and what projects we're ALREADY working on!

Namaste!

~Dani