What I've always dreamed of is now available to me, but I've changed. What do I do?

someone give me cliffs notes on this question.

Is it too vague?

@fish4answers; I think it is indeed too vague.

So something like having the chance to hike through Europe for a year, but now you have a spouse and young kids? I have felt some sadness and melancholy, and regret when that has happened. But that’s why I just told @nimalc to jump at a chance to study abroad.

If you are just wondering if you have changed and are wondering if you should take the chance, try flipping a coin. If you flip the coin and are happy with outcome, great! That’s your path.

If you don’t like the outcome, your heart really wanted the alternative, so follow your heart.

Carpe diem!

I think zenvelo get what I meant. But to make things clearer for curiouscat and the others, what if you are a different person already, and what you wanted or your dream before doesnt fit to who you are now. And with that realization I can’t stop feeling scared for the future.

I grew up wanting a horse so bad, I even told my parents one year not to get me anything if they didn’t get me a horse.

When I got my first job, I bought a horse, but I sold him with in a month because I found out I would rather have a car.

I had alway’s wanted to learn to play drums , so at 50 years old , I gave it a try and did great , Even though I don’t play much , I stepped up and just did it, and now I’m proud I did it anyway. So give it a try , you may be amazed .

It’s too vague for me. I think the answers would be very different if the thing yearned for is, say, a job, a person, an object, or an experience.

Follow-up thought, tying into your comment “And with that realization I can’t stop feeling scared for the future.”

I have known of more than one person who had a dream of the career they wanted to pursue, only to realize when they finished school that in truth they really had no desire any more to follow that path. Is this your situation?

Some youngsters imagine they want to be a doctor or an astronaut or a musician or a firefighter and follow that dream single-mindedly through school and right on into a satisfying career. Others outgrow their original notions and change course along the way. Some, however, forget to reexamine their early ambitions while they’re growing up, and they may end up walking out on graduation day with a certificate in hand for a future they no longer want. It happens. It can happen especially when there’s the spectre of parental expectations and disappointment bearing down on you and discouraging any change of plans.

I think the best thing to do is to reevaluate your situation realistically and figure out what you truly do want. How can you salvage something from what you’ve done while moving toward where you want to be instead? The prospect of spending the next 40 or 50 years engaged in a business or profession that doesn’t excite you and fulfill you ought to be enough motivation to take the hit now while there’s still plenty of time.

@Jeruba would you believe its all of what you’ve mentioned, job, person, object and experience, but I really want to focus this question on the job/career. sadly for me it feels that I cant fix my other problems (person,object and experience) with out fixng this.

@fish4answers, I’m sorry. You sound trapped. In your place I would probably be thinking about running away. You are now reminding me of a former co-worker of mine who went through a nervous breakdown about a month before his wedding—person, experience, object (if you consider their planned home an object)—because he simply couldn’t go through with it. It forced him to come out as a gay man. Not long afterward he also resigned to take a new job in SF, where he could comfortably follow his new lifestyle. That was a total surrender of everything he’d been and a whole new life. At last check he was very happy.

@Jeruba that is good to hear your friend is happy. May I ask how he cope up with his nervous breakdown? How was it classified as a nervous breakdown?

@fish4answers, I don’t know anything about his actual mental or physical health diagnosis. What he said to me was, “I had a nervous breakdown.” He said he went to pieces and couldn’t stop crying and he just knew he had to call the wedding off but was terrified to tell his fiancee and his parents. He was gone from work for about two months, and he told me this when he came back. News while he was gone was a lot more vague. We were friends at a co-worker level, but never close, and so I did not ask him any questions; he just told me what he chose to tell me, and I expressed my concern and sympathy and told him I thought he’d done well to handle such a difficult thing so bravely.

A couple of months later he introduced me to his new partner at a company event, and not long after that he was gone. A few e-mails since then have indicated he was happy and doing fine; that’s all I know.