Letting My Dreams Die Was The Best Thing I Ever Did

It led me to an amazing place and made room for new goals

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

The media loves a success story. If someone can utter the words “I’ve always dreamed of this ever since I was a kid, and now it is reality,” everyone eats it up. There are tons of feel-good stories about people who pushed through tons of adversity to achieve their goals. They trained and ground and pushed until they bent reality to their will and make the impossible possible.

I am not one of those people.

I let my dreams die, and I would do it all over again.

My childhood dreams

My dream as a child was unique and straightforward: I wanted to be the president. Yeah, okay, every kid says that at some point, but that goal evolved into something else. I wanted to be near the president. As I grew older, I began to consume news media at a voracious clip.

When I reached high school, that consumption accelerated. I started my days watching the news. I spent my days reading the news on the school computers. Then I came home, did my homework, and watched more news before bed. I loved the information.

So much news consumption made me realize that I didn’t want to be in government; I wanted to cover…