how long can you hold on to a dream?  i was talking to my work colleague the other day about our current disillusionment with our jobs.  and they’re *fine* jobs – they’re good, solid jobs that make a difference to others.  but we just sort of fell into these roles, and they’re jobs that we’re good at, but not passionate about.   we spent an hour daydreaming about the kinds of things we wished we were doing instead.  “so what do you want to be when you grow up? ha ha ha,”  – but the laughter was hollow.

then the other day, amity wrote a blog post about not knowing which direction to head in her future.   and i, (always so quick with the sage advice that i am incapable of following myself), said don’t worry! lots of people are just feeling their way along in life! you’ll get there eventually!

but those two occurrences have left me feeling very unsettled.

i don’t remember how it was that i came to know i wanted to be a therapist, but at seventeen when i was applying to university, i knew that that was my ultimate goal.  there was never any question – i’ve always just known.

and now…well, three weeks ago i turned 37.

and in talking about it, it suddenly hit me like a punch to the gut – the hard realisation that *twenty years later*, i am no closer to my dream than i was then.

fuck me. twenty years.

oh sure, i’ve got a b.a., and i’ve made two aborted half-attempts at getting into grad school.  but those jokes i make about “working on a 50 year career plan” are worn threadbare of amusement.  i look at friends who are doing jobs they really love and wonder why the hell i’m not.  i’m filled with a deep, disquieting jealousy.

how did i let this happen?  i still want to be a therapist just as much as i did those twenty eager years ago.  more so, even.  it’s all i’ve ever really wanted to do, always been my ideal.  i can even picture myself doing it – i can imagine my office, i can imagine what i would wear, i can imagine what i would say.   i know i’d be good at it too, damnit.  if there was ever anything i thought was destined to be in my life, that’s it.

and every day i spend stuck where i am now, is one more day that i’m not working towards making that dream happen.

part of the holdup is that up until now j and i have been dithering about our moving plans – i wanted to hold out for more travelling opportunities first, he wanted to get to canada as soon as possible.   back-and-forth we go about the best approach, who will apply for a visa, how much money we need in the bank, can we take off for another couple months, yadda, yadda, yadda.

it’s the paralysis of indecision, and i’m sinking in it.

so the other day when i realised it had been twenty years, twenty fucking years, since i first knew “what i want to be when i grow up”… well, it occurred to me that maybe it’s actually time to grow up.

enough with the half-assed attempts, enough with always wanting to do just-one-more-thing first, enough with being stuck in the kind of job that makes me jealous of other people’s jobs.  i’ve been casting about for something new to anchor to, a new challenge – and i think i’ve found it.

for twenty years, it’s been there all along.

distopian dream girl – built to spill

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Like this post

Unlike