Dream jobs

on why I'm starting a newsletter

The question of what I wanted to be when I grew up used to excite me. I was blindly optimistic about it. Knowing I could become something someday was a dream in itself, one that I wanted to chase. At that point, believing in it was equivalent to knowing it. I didn’t need to have a blueprint of how I’d get there; I just needed to believe someday I would.

Years passed, and that once clear path became obstructed by uncertainty. Still, I studied writing for four years, networked in the field, got internships, and even started job shopping. But with doubt looming, I realized I had gradually stopped chasing my elusive dream job. My dream had become inextricable from the employment I sought out, leading me to think the only way I’d ever feel like a writer was if someone with authority titled me one.

If the highest form of validation for doing what you love is making money from it, you often must be willing to renounce agency over it. For me, that meant creativity became synonymous with productivity, and I became enslaved by the misconception that the amount of work I output, and the response I got from it, exclusively measured my worth. When I found myself in a writing drought, unable to produce for public consumption on my blog or university newspaper, I convinced myself I was doomed to fail. Writing for myself, where the dream had started, became unimportant and useless.

But even when I failed at fully fleshing out my self-proclaimed potential, what I could always fall back on was time. Time to change directions. Time to take a break. Time to figure it out. Until graduation, the job I’d have someday felt like an artifact from the future. An asteroid I knew was coming for me but was still far enough in the distance I could prepare for its arrival. As the distance narrowed, I raced toward the overwhelming deadline of conceivable success, assuming an answer to the question, what are you going to do with your life? would render me safe.

Work is a fact of life. That we cannot change. How much power we give it is what I’m now trying to reclaim. Of course, I need to find a job to sustain me financially, but for now, it’s unlikely that job can double as fulfilling me creatively. I made the decision I’d rather never make a single dollar from writing than end up where I was headed, accidentally killing my passion for it. I realized that if I wanted to chase my dream, I first had to reconnect with what it was.

So I wrote. I wrote in journals until my hand ached, tapped my keyboard into the wee hours of the night, scribbled in the margins of the books I was finally reading. I took time to do it for me and no one else.

I heard once that people who aren’t writers don’t wonder if they are, and that longing feeling is our invitation.

Writing a newsletter is my dream job. The kind that makes me as excited as the first time I wondered what I wanted to be when I grew up. I know it, believe in it, and now, I’m chasing it.

If you’ve been reading since the blog days, welcome back. If you’re new here, it’s nice to meet you. We have a lot of catching up to do.