So I guess the rollerskating didn't work out for you?

Bummer.

If everyone only did work that they “loved and believed in,” civilization would collapse in a week maximum. — an-salad

Why do you care? Maybe go do what you want anyway. I'm guessing that "civilisation" will look after itself, regardless of what you do.

Well, I like to take advantage of any excuse to quote Warren Zevon:

"You can dream the American Dream,
But you sleep with the lights on
And wake up with a scream,
You can hope against hope
That nothing will change,
Grab ahold of that fistful of rain."

I want to work Roland the headless Thompson gunner into a clever post, but this will have to do.

When did you first wake up from the American dream? — an-salad

1619.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/historical-significance-1619/596365/

When did you first wake up from the American dream? — an-salad

The dreams coming true happens only in the movies and fictions. Waking up from the dreams into the cold reality is what happens in real world.

The original American Dream was not about becoming rich: it was about manifest destiny, second chances, and acquiring sufficient wealth to provide and protect one's family.

After all the land was conquered and inhabited, the American Dream died; and was replaced with a new 'American Dream': greed. Now, the capitalism found in the US is, inevitably, slowly moving the wealth into a minority few--fewer and fewer people are able to acquire that baseline wealth. I wonder how long until we sublimate it with a better system.

"The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night" . . . there's a Schopenhauerian thought for you.

Does no one here have a house, decent job, and kids who are doing well?

"The American Dream" is a phrase coined by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 bestseller The Epic of America.

According to an article in JSTOR, the publisher didn't think "the American Dream" was a sellable title with a severe depression underway. J. T. Adams is not related to the presidential Adams family.

He put it more succinctly elsewhere in the book: a “dream of a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.” This contemporary review of Epic notes that Adams alluded to the idea in fifty or more passages in the book. The unnamed reviewer thought Adams believed the dream to be “our greatest contribution to the thought of the world.”

According to Google Ngram, peak American Dream (at least the phrase's appearance in print) was during the Clinton Administration in 1994.

The dreams coming true happens only in the movies and fictions. Waking up from the dreams into the cold reality is what happens in real world. — Corvus

If you'd like to see a movie which might wake you up from the American Dream, I think There Will Be Blood should do the trick.