When a Dream Becomes Reality
The Best Thing I’ve Done for My Dream is to Never Give Up
Learn From My Mistakes and Take it Off the Dream Shelf
I have been writing since I was a kid, but I didn’t know that I wanted to be a full-time writer until recently. Ok. That’s a lie. I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 10, but I kept denying myself of the calling placed upon me.
What I didn’t realize is my soul wanted to write because it didn’t know what else to do. That’s when a dream becomes reality because the best thing I’ve done for my dream is to never give up. It becomes the very thing I must do to be myself. So, I’m a late bloomer. I share this so that anyone reading will learn from my mistakes, especially if you are in your 20s or 30s.
As a young adult, I knew I didn’t want to work in an office full time, but life presented a path that did not immediately lead me to a career in writing. My heart wanted to major in Journalism. My head said no. You must make money. So, I headed into Marketing. When I flunked out of university, I began to drop into writing classes at the local community college.
At night I would write short stories, dreaming up characters and plots, but it was always a side hustle. It always remained on the dream shelf — this idea that I would call myself a writer and write for a living. Pfft. That was for people who believed they could do this.
Then one day, I signed up for a Creative Nonfiction class through UCLA Extension. As I explored different genres of writing — memoir, travel, and essays, it felt good and right. The words were rolling out of me, and I couldn’t stop. One evening as I read my short piece out loud in class, my professor turned to me, “Are you trained?”
“You mean, do I have an MFA?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I said almost sheepishly.
“So, you are intuitive.”
I felt called out, wondering how the rest of the class would treat me going forward. Yes, that was my trauma response of having been raised by a narcissistic parent (but that’s for a later essay). As I processed her statement, I realized she was paying me the best compliment ever. I reflected on it…
