When is it time to let your dream die?

Wow, is it just me, or is this time of the year been full of upheaval? Between people moving, relationships changing structure, and others switching jobs, it seems that nothing is nailed down.

Maybe that’s what happens every year around this time. The giddy excitement of Spring turns into the all-out busyness of Summer, and then after Labor Day we land in Autumn with a thud.

The blogging dream

But more than the upheaval is the sense that people around me are reevaluating their choices. This is both in a personal sense and in a professional sense.

For example, my friend Saul, who is an amazing writer and thinker, has considered giving up blogging to focus on other energies that might reach more people. I personally think this is a travesty, but I can understand what it’s like to feel like you’re wasting your energies. (Though I wouldn’t mind if would go to his site and tell him not to quit.)

And to be honest, I’ve been reevaluating my site here and its aims. I originally started this site as a place to build a community and, along side of this, build an income stream that I could use to take control of my income.

I’m not impatient, but I’m reevaluating whether that’s even what I want at this point, to say nothing of whether it’s possible or within my means.

And while it may not seem like there’s a connection to you, it feels like that with my search for potentially purchasing a home, it means that the idea of self-starting a business is going to remain out of reach.

Why, you may ask? Because buying is more expensive than renting, and also it adds a barrier to movement (no more dropping the keys in the mailbox and moving across the country for me), so it means that I’m going to need a job that pays. And pays well. And reliably. That sort of constrains my limited ability to grow this to larger than what it is now.

Or maybe not. I guess that still remains to be seen.

The music dream

Earlier in my life, I came to a similar crossroads. I had been in New York for many years, trying and largely failing to build any kind of momentum in the music world. Forget being able to find a band that wasn’t terrible; I found I couldn’t even write any songs of my own anymore.

So, as I’ve recounted before, I abandoned the plan, and didn’t play anything for a couple of years. Nowadays I play, but I have yet to commit to any new musical pursuits, aside from the occasional production credit on an album.

Was it all for the dream?

So when is it time to let your dream die?

To my mind, there is only one time and that’s: when it’s no longer your dream.

I bet maybe some of you would have thought that I would have said “never“. As in, “never give up on your dreams” in that woo-woo, you-can-do-it kind of way.

But that’s assuming that the dream remains yours. Because while dreams can evolve, the people who dream them can evolve too.

My idea to be a working musician? Sounds great, at least in theory: the adulation and the sense of creative accomplishment that comes with building something that moves people.

But the reality of it: toiling in obscurity, financial insecurity, the fickleness of the trade, the sense of needing to wring out one’s creative energies in order to eat, all of these things don’t really appeal to me, not anymore. The dream stayed the same, only the person changed.

That isn’t to say that the dream can’t change either. Is there a way for me to write and perform music in such a way that I get what I want out of it without too much of what I don’t? Perhaps!

And what about this site? Is it possible to continue to build this site, growing a readership and building a brand, gaining clients and helping people achieve a sense of serenity around the areas of finance, all while having a mortgage and knowing that I can’t just quit my job and go at this full time?

Is it time for this dream to die?

No. Not yet. I’m not done here. We all still have too much to learn from each other.

So I will see you next Monday and Thursday, as I’ve done every week without fail for the past 150 weeks or so. And counting.