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.

You Are a Real Artist Already

Don’t think you’re a “real” artist? Here I tell you why that’s bullshit.

I’ve always secretly doubted I’m a true creative. Sure, I was always doing art or writing stories as a kid, but I knew there were more talented kids out there. My best friend in high school was so obviously more artistically talented than me that I wasn’t sure if I admired her or was deeply jealous. Both! When I started writing seriously I remember saying to her that I know I’m no Milan Kundera – who was apparently the writer I thought at that time was one of the “real” artists. I thought I was just being realistic about my talents. But actually, how I saw myself was based purely on my own insecurities. I have always undersold myself and set the bar low.

Even while I dedicated myself to writing, I felt like I was pretending. So I sought out opportunities in life that I thought would help me develop a fulfilling (and money-making) career, and I kept my art on the back burner. I never stopped writing, but I didn’t prioritize it or fully commit to it. And predictably, I didn’t find success with it. That is to say, I didn’t get anything published. I came close a number of times, but the process of submissions and rejections was so demoralizing I eventually gave it up. And then one day I found I couldn’t write. I began to believe that maybe I wasn’t a writer anymore. Maybe I had never truly been one.

You’re reading this because I eventually came out of that dark place. And I learned some important lessons along the way I want to pass on to other creatives struggling with life choices and where their art fits in to it all. All these lessons fit a philosophy of creative living I call whole-life creativity. It’s what it sounds like: creativity that is the generative source of all you do, not an activity confined to the extra minutes left over. Creativity should be how you live every moment of your life. Let me explain.

Do Art to Live

I used to think my real life was the money-making work I did, and that my art, as sacred as it was to me, was something that I would have to do on my own time. Like a hobby. I knew I’d never make money off my fiction – I don’t write best-seller material – so I found jobs that included writing, thinking they would be the closest I’d come to supporting myself doing what I love. And I wasn’t wrong about that. What I was wrong about was how I valued my writing and prioritized it. 

See, I believed I would only qualify as real writer if I was “successful” at it – that is, I earned money from it. And I knew this would never happen with my fiction. Therefore, my fiction did not deserve to be what I prioritized in my life. Real life was the work-a-day life, and my fiction was like my shadow life. Real in my own heart, perhaps, but not in the eyes of the world. None of this made me a happy person. 

A couple pivots had to happen in my perspective for my misery living this way to lift. One, I had to completely divorce art from money. In fact, I had to outright reject the idea of earning any money at all with my writing. Once this link was decoupled, I was able to begin valuing my fiction for what it brought into my life. The joy of a dedicated practice of an art. Knowing I’m a real writer because and only because I sit down and write. Writing whatever the hell I want because probably no one’s going to read it anyway.

This first pivot naturally led to the second: Writing quickly became what feeds my life. I realized that before I had simply been doing art, and that now I was living art. My approach to writing became an embodiment of a new approach to life, one that was focused on experiencing it rather than milking all my time and effort for quantifiable results. The unexpected irony of this was that I ended up writing far more than I ever had before. In developing my whole life into a practice of creativity, something in me bloomed, and the words started coming back.

Once I realized that I needed to do art to live - and not the other way around, living to do my art - everything became clear. Writing is one way I choose to express my creativity, but it is just one part of a greater art: my life. The way I live my life day in and day out, from moment to moment, is my true art. My writing isn’t just something I do during a time I set apart. It is woven through all aspects of my day. A walk I take in the morning may inspire an afternoon writing fiction; that writing session may spark something I write here. The words are always there. I just need to be open to them and listen. The same is true of any creative endeavor. The ideas are already there - and the more you open your life up to be your greatest art, the more inspired you will feel in whatever you choose as your artistic craft.