dreams – Heather Hoyt

When we are young, we are told to dream. And then we grow up, and the world burns up our dreams and we have to figure out what to do with the charred remnants.

So I had a dream of being a writer when I was young. And then I grew up and discovered that my dream didn’t really exist. And I think this is true of most dream jobs: they only exist in dream land.

I’m currently going to graduate school in philosophy, and the job market for philosophy PhDs is absolutely brutal. Too many applicants. Not enough jobs. And the jobs don’t always fit right.

There is a friction there: On one side, there is what you want and who you are. On the other side, there is what other people want and need and what they are willing to pay you for. Those two sides don’t always match up very well.

So to achieve success, you have to do things you don’t want to do. And sometimes the success you thought you wanted isn’t worth it.

This friction manifests it in many other ways, which may become insurmountable obstacles to your dreams:

You get your dream job and discover you actually hate it.
Your dream job doesn’t actually exist in the world.
You have a specific skill set that doesn’t work for the job market.
Your skills are unappreciated by managers who want to go in different directions.
You have too narrow or too broad interests/skills for what employers or others want.
You can only get paid well for something you don’t love to do.
If you get paid for what you love to do, you might stop loving it.
You work hard in your job and never get recognized and never get promotions.
You love a certain field but you aren’t actually very skilled at it.

Job market friction can be like burning. It’s burning down your dreams.

So how do you deal with is?

Here are something helpful things to remember:

Who you are is not what you do
Your self-worth is not dependent on your financial worth
Small success can be as valuable as large success
Life can be longer than you think, and you can reinvent yourself multiple times
It’s okay to change your pathway
Relationships with people bring more joy than achieving success
Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to do the things that you do want to do
Having a small impact can be good enough

In 2018, I put a book I had written (One Thing is Needful) in a figurative drawer and thought I would never look at again. But in 2020, I got it out again and started working on it. Two years later, I’ve basically finished it. I’m working on sharing it more soon.

I try to follow the Lord’s will about when to do things. Sometimes I do the right thing, but it’s not the right time yet. Sometimes it takes me a whole lot longer than I want it to.

In the end of 2018, I moved to this home in the mountains and I thought I would live here for forever. But I didn’t stay more than a few months, and when I moved away, I thought I would never come back. A year later, at the end of 2019, we owned this house and it’s been my home for almost two years now.

I really worked to get a novel published before I had kids, but it didn’t work out. I thought I wasn’t good enough to be a writer and that I failed. But years later, I went to a conference, surrounded by authors and people trying to write, and I realized that I didn’t fail because I wasn’t good enough. I failed because it wasn’t the right time for me yet, and I had more things to learn.

The right people will be in your life at the right time. I have felt very much alone and I thought no one was there–but those times forced me to reach out to people who needed me. And then people came when I needed them to. I was led to people who I needed to connect with. I learned from others when I needed to learn those things.

I still don’t know the timetable for many things in my life. Some things will be a lot slower than I want them to be. Some things might happen a lot quicker.

But if I trust in the Lord, I can do His will.

And His will is much more about becoming the person I need to be than just getting things done.

Tag: dreams

Friction between dreams and reality

The Right Time