How to Get Over Dreams You’re Too Old and Ugly For Now
Take the eye cream, leave the goal-y.
Maybe you shouldn’t start that podcast. Or quit your 9-5. Or learn the guitar. Or take up knitting, or try to drastically switch careers, or go back to school. Maybe you shouldn’t do any of those dreams you tell yourself you want.
If you wanted them, wouldn’t you have already done them?
Isn’t it too late now, anyway?
Maybe.
It could be too late. If you regularly wake up with pulled muscles from sleeping, yeah, maybe you’re too old to learn skateboard tricks.
But maybe, like me, you have so many dreams. So many things you want to do before you die, or just do at some point. It’s hard to know which ones to focus on and which ones to leave until later, so you try and make progress on all of them at once. “Just in case it’s too late, I don’t want to run out of time,” you tell yourself.
But doing a tiny bit of 1,000 things will never lead to the kind of mastery of a goal that I want, and you probably want the same thing.
Instead, pick out the goals you’ll focus on and burn the rest.
Not, like, literally.
Put them aside. For now, maybe forever. Maybe you will get too old for some of them.
But that’s okay. It’s called growth.
You may grow out of old goals, decide you don’t really want to do it, or yeah, they’re just not gonna happen.
That’s okay, too. Replace them with new goals.
It can feel like a failure to quit a goal you’ve had for a long time. Like you’re giving up, and like a part of yourself will never be fully realized.
But you’re just growing out of old goals and into new ones. That’s an even more successful place to be than checking long-sought goals off a list just because you were too scared to admit they weren’t what you wanted anymore, they didn’t light you up as much as others.
It’s okay to let go.
To let a dream die.
But if you do have something inside you burning strong enough that you can’t set it aside, you can’t forget it, and you really will feel like an old, ugly failure if you don’t try…. Then do that. Try. You owe it to yourself to clear out the dreams taking up space and getting in your way equally as much as you owe it to yourself to pursue the ones that fully light you up.
It’s okay to outgrow your past selves.
It’s okay to let go of old dreams.
Just keep dreaming, and growing.
And doing, and trying.
With any luck, one day you’ll be old and ugly anyway. You can’t stop time. But you can stop wasting it now and focus on going after what you really want, and leaving all the rest.
Make today yours. And tomorrow, and the next day.
I’ll be right there with you… trying too.
I’d love to hustle toward my dreams more but each year I see many of them slipping by with nothing done. I have kids who have extra needs and no childcare (besides school hours), so I honestly can’t hustle as hard as I want to. I’d love to work more. We’d all love more time, right? More time to create, more time to explore what I want to do, time for hobbies, time for a social life (lol)… I just crave MORE than I have, while also recognizing what I have is valuable too, and something many others may be dreaming of. I don’t take anything for granted but I still can’t help reaching for more.
Instead, I look for ways to let pieces of old dreams in.
For example, I can’t break into the film industry now as a 37 year old mom with responsibilities who can’t work 15 hour days. I wish I’d done that when I was younger and had the time. Where could I be now if I had?
But, I can take an improv class from a local theatre near me for a few months for fun and to stretch my creative muscles. Maybe I’ll hate it but who cares? It’s just a few evenings for a few months. A drop in the bucket of time I’ve already wasted.
And maybe I’ll love it. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe I’ll meet new friends. Maybe I’ll have something to look forward to putting on pants for.
Letting go of old dreams isn’t about giving up.
It’s about changing them and moulding them to be more realistic for the phase of life you’re currently in, or the time/energy/money/etc you can currently expend.
If you don’t change your dreams over time, you risk getting nowhere at all and still complaining about it five years, ten years, thirty years from now.
After all, nothing changes if nothing changes.
Until next issue,
-Michelle
Welcome to Biz Shiz, a free biweeklyish newsletter full of useful freelancing tips, creative biz tools, creator industry news, and more from someone doin' this online biz shiz for 10+ years now.
💌 In this issue of Biz Shiz #12:
➔ A tiny website edit to make a shit-tonne more money
➔ Get consistent on social media: I made a social media planner for you
➔ How to write an essay a fancy lit mag would actually publish
➔ Big algorithm shakeup at Instagram!
➔ 6 weird n’ wonderful freelance opportunities
➔ and mooooore
📼 Latest video
OK, it’s not my latest video, but it’s a quick n’ gooder. A small, tiny, seemingly-inconspicuous change to your website that has big, huge, rich-bitch-ious ramifications. What? Yeah, it helped me quote leads better, make more money, and crap my pants less often on sales calls…
📰 Interesting news
Social media: Instagram is changing the algo to “reward original content” and, by extension, promote smaller accounts. What do you think, will this enhance reach?
More Insta: New interactive Story stickers on Instagram. Do you… care?
TikTok ban: The US gov vs. TikTok: Whose side are you on?
😎 Tip o’ the mornin’ to ya
Look, I write about social media for a living. And tech and apps and marketing and all that nerdy stuff I genuinely love and have immersed my professional life in for over 10 years now.
Pop quiz: what’s a sentence that is part of every single article ever written by anyone on the internet about social media?
Answer: “You need to follow a consistent posting schedule!”
BARF.
Like, I know, right? But also, I really don’t fucking care.
I love social media. I love creating content. I know that advice is correct in today’s algorithm overlord times. It’s just TRUE.
But when do I consistently create the kind of high quality content I want to for my personal and professional social platforms to effectively market my business? Absolutely never!
So, I made this rather dashing social media planner for myself (at first). I wanted something SIMPLE where I could write down general outlines and ideas on a weekly/monthly basis. I wanted it to have just enough info on it that I could read it and go off and shoot something, but not so much detail that it become overwhelming, like filling out a 17 part Notion page template for a single social post. No thanks.
Quick, simple, reminder-ful.
As in, it reminds you to go shoot the badass content you just thought of.
Has it miraculously made me consistent on social media? No. It’s a planner, not freakin Jo Frost standing over my bed beating me with a feather duster and stern pithy sayings until I wake up and seize the day.
But, it simplifies social media planning to the point that I’m actually making PROGRESS. And that’s something.
If you wish you had a plan for your social media content but don’t want a giant, huge, spreadsheet, Notion, database, mega project management-y clusterfuck, then try this on for size. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
It’s $10. Canadian. So like $7 USD. C’mon. It’s worth more than a beer, eh?
Try it out. Like it. Love it. LOVE MEEEEEEEEE
📁 Related resources
Hey, did I mention my new social media planner template? jk jk
This quick post covers like 90% of what you need to know to write an essay that a lit mag would actually publish
Facebook isn’t dead! I recently wrote about the top Facebook trends you need to know in 2024…
💻 Weekly workspace
It’s actually amazing how much a cleared off desk space can motivate me?? Anyone else relate? Something about a tidy workspace = more productive, enjoyable days. Reminder to self when I let it pile up with receipts, papers, 17 tubes of lip balm, 14 hard drives, and 3 unopened granola bars again.
What does your workspace look like this week? Hit reply or leave a comment! :)
💰 Weird n’ wonderful freelance gigs
Reminder: Including listings here doesn’t mean I know or endorse them. Always do your own due diligence before applying for any job.
Social media: Passionate about digital healthcare? Headspace is looking for a temp 6 month social media marketer contract. Nice resume booster.
Writing: Wanna make $82,000 USD/year to write for the New York Times about dogs? Thought so. (Me too.) It says a kids and/or pet product reviewer… hmm, do those products overlap? (US-based only.)
Design: Passionate about books? BookLaunchers is hiring a freelance cover designer.
Research/writing: Love true crime and/or are a criminal? (Kidding.) This mysterious YouTube channel is hiring a crime script researcher. It’ll be perfect for you, Spooky Mulder.
Writing: Know shit about music? American Songwriter is hiring a commerce writer to talk about/review new music gear. Very niche!
Writing: Look, this one is prob just for those starting out. (I got my very first bylines from Problogger job board listings, ok? Now I charge $1,000+ per post.) This one is writing recipe blog content. Who knows, it could be great, or maybe just a portfolio builder…
💀 Lol zone
👋 Thanks for bein’ here!
As always, I’d love to hear from you. Hit reply or comment! Or join the Chat to connect with other hot local creatives in your area.
-Michelle @michellemartincreative
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