Dreaming Awake

“You must do what you love,” read a middle line in a long email from one of my former supervisors. A diamond in the rough, a nugget of gold for free, in the form of advice.

My mother always instilled in me that I should have a dream, a thing I want to do, and do whatever I could to make it happen. In just my lifetime she had dozens of dreams she pursued, ranging through quilting, making clothing, making greeting cards, writing – always the writing, every few years. She lived by example. So being reminded to follow my dream should not be that big of a  deal.
Except sometimes we get bogged down by the daily-ness of life, of trying to survive and finish what we started. It is hard to see when one thing is finished and the next is about to begin.

As I am coming to the end of my graduate education I see that one thing is ending and fading away to the next, via the job search process.

But sometimes just having one nudge is not enough. Sometimes we need someone to sit us down and tell us the very thing we have been thinking for months. Because we are people, and we have faults and get scared. My fear is not the fear of doing, but of the result. Because I can think of what-if and then-that scenarios for hours upon hours.

But I know that if I do what I love, and I apply myself, it will work out.

And I am excited to have an opportunity to do what I love.