Did/do you follow your dream(s)?

I did and I am. It helps that my “dream” as a child was to be “some kind of artist”. Pretty general with lots of room for interpretation.

All the details I decided upon along the way.

I was going to, but I don’t think it was meant to be.

I’ve learned that my dreams are the proverbial stars that guide me. I may never reach them, but their guidance still orients my life, anyway. They are more like principles than dreams, but that’s just semantics, I guess.

I find that a lot of things I dreamed of forty years ago are now true. They took a long time and didn’t happen in any way I imagined them, but they did happen. There are dreams that remain. I’ve learned patience. They still have a chance to come true.

I do. Probably not as vigorously as I should right now(in school) but I just have this feeling, I can’t really describe it, but I just know I’m going to get in life where I want to be.

Don’t dream it. Be it

I didn’t dream when I was younger… and in retrospect, it does seem that I stopped wanting to be _ when I grow up around the same time as I was sexually abused. I always dreaded those open-ended questions: “Where do you see yourself _ years from now?”

I just went through the motions, until I found myself extremely depressed in my sophomore year of college. I dropped out and worked clerical jobs, but realized I wouldn’t be able to live independently on that income. So I went back to college and took interesting electives until I found a career that interested me.

I currently have a dream that I am determined to have turn into reality and it is different from normal as I usually give up on them, but this is different. To me it is a positive life changing dream that has to be grasped with both hands and I would be a fool not to follow it.

So in other words, I don’t normally, but I am now.

I followed my dreams to get where I am. I’m going to have a beard by the time I defend my PhD. If you had told me this ten years ago, I would be thrilled to know that these things would come true.

But I’m still trying to figure out what my dreams for the future are now. What is realistic, and what is simply a story that I tell myself in order to live?

Sometimes I sort of feel like this:

“He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.” (The Great Gatsby, p. 97.)

I always tell my kids that I had and still have many dreams; some have come true, some have not, but ultimately my goal is for them to be happy and healthy. This is my dream.

I feel somewhat ashamed to say that I never really had very big dreams. Or any dreams. I just live life as it comes. Perhaps that’s why I don’t have some of the things I wish I had.

Certainly when it comes to love, I do. And, basically, anything else as well. I get what I want.

First I made my parents happy. I acquired all the letters behind my name and they were proud. I was bored. So I chucked it all and went to the dogs. That made me happy and now the challenges of new businesses and the dogs still keep me happy. As does my mate and our lifestyle. I am very lucky.

I never made my parents happy. I think maybe they were a little happy when I had children, but they never really said anything. But other than that, they never said anything I did made them happy. Then again, maybe I only did things that I thought would make me happy at some point.

All my life I’ve wondered what it must feel like to have the type of dream that drives people to make difficult sacrifices for years on end to make that dream come true.

I’ve never had that type of dream. Mine are much less lofty, and short term.

I wanted to be an entomologist when I was little. I was real serious about it too. Insects were my passion. I still think insects kick ass, but somewhere along the line, I discovered video games, and that was pretty much the end of that. :/

Who knows what you might have discovered had your desire been to be an etymologist, instead?

Bugs are to video games as words are to _______________?

Hmm…I can’t even figure out what bugs ARE to video games…blank spaces?

Bugs are to video games as words are to epigrams.