When Dreams Don't Work Out

Do you know what it is like to have a dream, and then life throws you problem after problem when you are just starting out. Then, you finally give up on the said dream? The life you always imagined is gone in the blink of an eye, and you start to think about old goals, and you try to come up with new ones, but none of them fill that void of the dream that will never be. This has happened to me so many times I can’t even count. 

At first, I wanted to be a ballerina, but I was told from a young age, I never had the body. My turn out was not enough, and my body type would always be an issue. I did dance for 14 years despite the abuse until my body couldn’t take it anymore. 

There were shorter dreams like wanting to be in the FBI or CIA to be an agent. It was about the greater good for me, thinking I would make a difference in the world. 

My life long dream has been wanting to be a writer. Even now, while writing, I still have those moments when I struggle with the idea of being a writer.

What is being a writer, really?

Writing daily?

Writing a few times a week?

When you publish your work?

When you are paid to publish your work?

When you are paid to publish your work by a literary magazine only?

When you win an award?

I had this professor in college, and it was my first time on campus. I was randomly assigned to him and had decided on an emphasis on poetry because the previous year, I was having a love affair with Yeats, Keats, and Byron. We were quite the foursome, and I was still lost in my lovers’ haze when the professor sat there staring at me. 

“Do you have a burning desire to write?” He turned back to his computer, searching for classes. 

“Sorry?” I only am concerned with burning sensations when I pee. 

“Do you have a burning desire to write, is a fire within you that can’t be contained?” He was yelling now. “It is the only way you will ever make it.” 

I was silent and unsure why someone would associate burning with desire. When you say burning, I immediately go to infection

“WELL!”

“Yes,” I whisper, raising my brow to see if I have said the correct answer. 

“Okay.” He stared a few moments at me and then continued on planning my classes. 

This was my introduction to if you know whether you are a writer or not. While I still think he should have seen his doctor about all his burning feelings, it wasn’t until many years later that I understood his point. My goals in that first meeting were still the safe route, and I planned on being a professor. I had to make sure I had a stable income while I produced my art. 

What I didn’t understand then was how much passion it would take to get my dreams off the ground. I was not a favorite student of anyone in the department. While I had good grades, no one told me to submit my work to publish or anything. 

When I graduated, I did whatever other student was doing trying to get a job as a writer. Without an internship or experience of any kind, I had to give up on the dream then to pay the bills. 

I didn’t know years later I would pick up writing again, and I would dream of a new dream. It was about writing for the one person who needed it.  

There are many times I have gotten caught up in my dreams of changing the world. I have always thought if I am not changing it in significant ways, then clearly, I am not doing enough. But I am improving this world with the one person who reads what I write and gets out of it what they needed. So I am learning it is okay to take an old dream and give birth to a new dream. It is okay when things don’t work. Just don’t stop dreaming. 

In the meantime, just write. 

Do You Call Yourself a Writer?

Have you ever given much thought to your name? I hadn't until I was older except that my name was hard to pronounce, and I ended up spelling it to everyone I came in contact with. There would be times I was asked what country I was from because outside of my small community, it is not a common name, and on rare occasions, I was asked what it meant. It never offended me that people thought I might be from another country or that they couldn't spell my name I just thought of it as the facts of my life. 

When I was in college, I was asked and told what my name meant over and over again. I finally looked up my name meaning so I could recite to anyone else who asked because I did start to get a little annoyed. I had never gone by any nicknames or some altered version of my name. It was always lovely to hear my name properly pronounced without having to correct someone, but it was rare. 

There have been other names I have been called like fat when I was a child because I wasn't as slender as the other kids in my class. I don't ever remember being called smart in school though I was called a good many times, I never could understand what good really meant. I was called quite a lot more than I have ever been called anything else in my life. But then I was called weird, crazy, or strange when I started to open up to others and stopped being quiet. 

Life changing events call for name calling too. It was fun to be called the girlfriend at times, and it was better to be called the ex. I love being called a mother and a parent. I hoped to be an aunt one day, but sister had a beautiful ring to it too. An employee was also a beautiful name when the paycheck came from it as well. 

My favorite name didn't show up until the last year, and it was one I didn't think I would like as much as I did. It was important to me and was solidifying the previous three work and devotion. It was a writer. I can remember the first time I was referred to as a writer friend in a blog, and it was absolutely fantastic. My heart leaped out of my body into the upper atmosphere and back again in a second. 

I had been hesitant to refer to myself as a writer, and it sounds like I was an impostor because I couldn't answer the questions of where I had been published at or when my book would be out. When I found other writers, there hasn't been a question about validation with writers in my community. You write; therefore, you are a writer; it does matter the frequency or how long or what you are writing, you just write.