Recently I’ve realized that life sometimes forces you to shift to a different version of a dream you had, or to even abandon a dream altogether.
I have an acquaintance who has long wanted to be an actress in Hollywood. She’s built her entire life and identity around acting…even though she’s in her 50s now, only gets the occasional low-budget TikTok gig, and isn’t all that compelling to watch in the stuff she posts online. I often wonder how much longer it will be before she finally realizes this particular dream is just not meant for her, and that she has to find a new version of it or try to focus on something else entirely.
I hope that doesn’t sound harsh, because I don’t mean it to be. It’s just that I’ve always had this belief that you should try and try and try…for a contained period of time. And “contained” could be weeks or years or decades, but at some point you need to pivot if you’ve exhausted every version of the dream you’re pursuing and are still hitting concrete cinderblocks. Sometimes you’re just in the wrong lane.
So for my acquaintance, maybe she’s supposed to shift slightly to be an acting coach, or an agent, or work in dialogue, or write scripts. Maybe she’s in the general vicinity of her dream but has never been able to go in the direction she’s meant to go, because she can’t let go of this one road. Or maybe she’s using her creativity in the totally wrong way and she’s supposed to abandon acting and do something completely different with her life. Again, since she hasn’t been able to let go of this one road, she hasn’t been able to explore other paths. And isn’t that a shame?
Which brings me to myself.
I’ve had a couple of dreams over my 45 years on planet Earth. Not many, to be honest, because most of the time I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing or why I’m actually here. But I will say my only real career dream has been to be a writer. This isn’t something “I always knew I wanted to be” or that I’ve done in my free time since childhood, but it is something I have a natural aptitude for, that is an important part of my creative expression, and that (perhaps most importantly) puts me into a flow state.
Anything that puts you into a flow state is something you are meant to do.
I’ve tried different versions of writing and have had varying success (technical writing, marketing content, ghostwriting, poems, a book), so I think I’m on the right track. But even though I would still love to be an author and poet, right now I’m having success as a technical writer, which means this is the road I’m supposed to be on. And I’m staying on it until it dead ends and I am guided by life to move onto another one. Or until life says I am ready for a different road.
This is not to say that all roads actually have an end, as a few people do one exact thing for their entire lives and that is their destiny, but I do know that my current one does. Not just because of the realities of our economic structures and the AI bullsh*t, which has dumped slime on all of our lives like Double Dare (anyone else remember that game show?!). But also because I feel in my soul that this particular road does have an end. I don’t know when or how, but at some point I will need to find another way forward. Most likely it will be time to pursue another version of this dream, but maybe it will be time find another one entirely – perhaps around the other activities that put me into a flow state (watercolor and tending to plants). I still have no idea, but I know that if I get out of the way and just let things unfold, life will help me figure it all out.
My other dream…well, this one is more in my face and is why I even started writing this piece. My other dream was to leave Texas (did that), move to the northeast (did that too), buy a house here (can’t seem to do that), and settle into a new community near the water (not sure if that’s feasible anymore). In other words, my new dream version of home was to plant myself permanently in a place of my own, build a big garden, feed the birds and squirrels, make friends, and grow old with the ocean breezes streaming in through the windows from across the Sound.
It’s been a difficult time as I’ve started to understand, over a lot of trial and error for 3.5 years, that maybe this particular dream isn’t for me. That maybe I’m like the acquaintance I mentioned earlier who wants desperately to be an actress, but it’s seemingly just not in the cards for her. Well, I think this dream may not be in the cards for me either. And unlike my writing dream where I’ve had success with different versions, so I know I’m at least headed in the right direction, it seems like I have to totally give up on this one because I’m hitting blocks every way I go.
I think over the last month, as we abandoned our home purchase search again because the math just isn’t mathing and the home we so wanted isn’t materializing, I’ve finally found more acceptance about having to find a different life and a different version of home. And this gave me the space to start pondering new dreams.
What is my life going to be now, I wonder? I don’t see the version I’d planned for anymore, but I also don’t see anything at all yet. So I’ve started trying different things on to see how they feel. Maybe I’ll do this, maybe I’ll do that, maybe I’ll live here, maybe I’ll live there. Maybe my life will look and feel like this instead of that.
And actually, it’s kind of fun to ponder a different future now that I’ve finally let go of what isn’t meant for me. It’s exciting to have the chance to create new dreams in my forties.
I guess the lesson in all of this is that life is more intelligent than our human brains and our fickle emotions. Sometimes we are steered from the things we think we want and moved instead toward the things that would be even better for us. And I think that’s the key: we have to trust that, when our dreams don’t come to fruition, something even better is planned for us. And then we have to decide to be ok with it and get out of the way.
Everything usually works out when we finally release what isn’t working, and decide to be open to something else.