The road to a dream was paved with practicality

Rethinking creative work in a world that supports artists like never before.

Image created via Midjourney

When I was young, I wanted to be a writer. Desperately. I filled pages of blank paper with stories and "published" a newsletter. Sometime in grade school, I received an old word processor and typed away in my bedroom, storing my creations on a floppy disk. I went to the regional Young Author's Fair in elementary school and again in middle school, and won a writing scholarship in high school.

But sometime during college, practicality set in. Writing didn't seem like a viable career. I didn't want to write a novel (at the time, I mostly associated successful authors with fiction and I'm not a fiction writer). And journalism wasn't appealing. Even though I graduated with an English degree, I went into financial technology. And there I stayed for the next 15 years.

Part of me regrets my choices. I wonder what I could be doing now if I'd made different decisions back then.