Re: Loving It

Dreams We Give Up

A good friend and I were emailing about all of the goals you let go as you grow up. This post is dedicated to you, Cassie. 

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When I was young(er), I wanted to be:

- a marine biologist

(I still think I may spend my retirement years living at the beach and tracking whales or measuring water pollution levels or something.)

- a musical theater star on Broadway

(Turns out, they kind of want you to be able to sing really well.)

- a singer/songwriter

(Ditto.)

- a life-changing high school teacher

(I was a competent educator, I think. But it wasn’t my gift. Or maybe I just didn’t try hard enough. I don’t know. I have some regrets.)

- a polyglot

(Learning even one second language is so freaking hard. I still struggle a ton with Spanish.)

- a missionary

(Remaining religious as an adult is helpful in this line of work. As is not being a clingy homebody.)

- a young mom

(Funny how being a parent tends to sound better when you’re years away from it.)

- President

(You know you’ve let yourself think that just maybe that could be you someday. I would totally run for office just as long as I never had to ask anybody for money. Or knock on any doors.) 

- an Indiana Hoosier, like everybody else in my family

(I am a Hoosier because I’m from Indiana, but what I mean by this is a graduate of IU. More regrets, here. Not that I chose DePauw instead, but that we only get one set of four years of college.)

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I also thought I’d have thick hair, cute clothes always, a house in Indiana, at least one dog, and my husband’s last name. I thought Chicago was scary and all the people there were mean. I didn’t know what a PhD was. I thought statistics were way boring and that running was the living worst.

Things certainly do change. It’s fun that we have the opportunity to get to know ourselves as we get older.