To All The 30-Somethings Whose Dreams Didn’t Work Out
Hey.
Hope it’s going alright.
That your student debt, credit card debt, or medical debt has an end in sight. So you got your BA because they told you to. It wasn’t what your passion was, but it was the smart thing to do. After sitting in a chair and staring at a computer while following your dreams on the side, you made the brave leap and decided you didn’t want to spend another day of your short life waking up sighing. So you followed your passion. You took heart in all the success stories you’d read and felt that if you tried hard enough, you too would become one of them. You believed in the dreamers. You were one. It would take heart to live your dreams. And guts. You’d fall behind your friends as they got promoted, found a partner, got married, had kids, and settled into a safe life. They told you it was magical. They told you that yes, marriage was hard. Kids were tough. Then they sighed before telling you it was worth it. Then they went to sleep at 10pm. You were still up, working on your art.
You followed your dreams. You worked harder than you ever had at any job, because this one thing you understood. You believed in it. It made you come alive in a way that nothing else ever could. It mattered. You celebrated every success. Every time someone paid you for your creativity. Even if you were barely breaking even, or if you were losing money. Because people understood what you were trying to express. They loved it. Some told you that it changed them. It was all you ever wanted. Even as you watched other people who worked just as hard at their art, or maybe not, getting ahead of you. Even if you felt they didn’t deserve it. That secretly, you knew ten people who were better, who deserved it more. Yes, that sometimes included yourself. But still. They’re making it and you aren’t. Maybe the world just isn’t ready for you yet. So you keep honing your craft. You believe in what you’re doing. It’s important. It makes you feel alive. So you keep trying.
And now, you’re in your thirties, and this wasn’t how the story was supposed to go. You were supposed to succeed. Or fail miserably like you always expected. Instead, you’re in the middle ground. You’re watching everyone you know pass you by. Buying homes. Having children. Getting promoted. Taking a vacation once in a while. But mostly a “Stay-cation” because there’d be so much work to catch up on if they ever took time off that it wasn’t worth it. Still, they have a 401K. They’ve never asked their parents for money. They’ve never had their parents suggest jobs to them that “You’d be so good at.”
Their lives sound so much nicer than they did in your 20’s.
So now you have a choice to make. Double down and accept that you may be one of those 20 or 30 year success stories, or try to figure out a career late in life. Plenty of people make career changes in their thirties, or early fourties. You’ve read all the success stories. So why not you? But you question it a lot more now. You’re reading only the success stories. No one writes about how they didn’t make it. Maybe that’s you. You need to make the right choice. You’re running out of time.
And so you find yourself floating, looking for a path to take, hoping it’s the right one. And you find yourself looking back, at all the choices you made out of belief and the things you created because of that passion that you’re still proud of.
You don’t regret a day of it. You shouldn’t. You followed your passions and took a risk, no matter what anyone told you. You may need to compromise now. However, for those years where you followed your dreams, no matter how much you sacrificed for them, you were alive. You still are.
