When You've Failed at Your Dream

Should you give up your dream if you’ve failed? That’s not the right question to ask!

I know I was born to be a writer. It’s always been about words and language for me. I even learned three other languages, I love them so much. All of my jobs, from policy analyst in DC to professional editor to academic have involved writing in some capacity. I continued to write fiction as I toiled on a PhD, splitting the writing into morning and afternoon sessions. I was doing what I always had: delegating my fiction writing to the time left over. I thought it was working well.

Then the worst happened. I stopped writing fiction. Looking back, I would call it writer’s block, but really it was more than that. I not only had no ideas for what to write, I didn’t want to write fiction anymore. This was one of the most profoundly awful feelings I’ve ever had. I’d considered myself a writer my entire life, and had pursued it seriously for over a decade at that point. To suddenly have it dawn on me, after being unable to write for a year or so, that maybe I wasn’t a writer anymore, or perhaps never was one to begin with, was disorientating and devastating.

I was at that time in my mid thirties. Maybe my lack of enthusiasm about writing was my brain telling me I needed to grow up and put away childish dreams. Maybe I’d had all my chances already, and it was time to gracefully embrace the inevitable decline in accomplishment of the second half of life (can you say midlife crisis? – haha). Of course that’s all bullshit, but at the time I genuinely felt that it could be time to accept that I’m not a writer at all. 

And I did. I came to a kind of peace about it. I didn’t write any fiction for about three years. I wrote a travel blog for a time, and then started writing a lot of what you see here on this blog, but no fiction. I had no ideas for fiction. Then one day out of the blue, I got an idea. It came in a flash and momentarily stole my breath away. I knew it was real because I could feel the excitement throughout my body. I sat with that idea, and it grew. And some months later, I started a novel. I’m still working on it, and I love writing fiction even more than I ever did. 

It feels like a miracle to be writing again, but it’s something much more mundane than that. I simply needed time to heal from the harm of my PhD. And I needed to reevaluate my relationship with fiction, come to a place where I was truly writing for myself only, because writing is who I am.

Maybe you’re in place similar place of confusion about your dream. Wondering if it’s worth continuing on. Should you give it up? I think this is the wrong question. What if what you really need to do is recalibrate your relationship with your dream? What if your long-held vision of your dream has started blocking you from pursuing it, rather than motivating you? Ask yourself how much of your dream has to do with specific outcomes, and how much with showing up to do the actual work of it. 

I had to step away from my dream entirely in order to give myself space to ask these questions. Just asking them feels like you are giving up on your dream! Trust me, I get it. I had to literally give up my dream to repossess it again on better terms. I’m telling you my story so that maybe you won’t have to go through such a painful experience. Ask your dream some hard questions – and then listen with an open heart.