Micro Essay: Dreams

Do you believe in dreams?

Not the fleeting kind that fade with morning light, but the deep, innate knowing—the quiet pull that tells you this is what you’re meant to do. The kind of certainty that settles in your bones and only feels right when you’re moving toward it.

All my life, I have known I was meant to be a creative. A writer. An artist. A maker of things that come from somewhere deeper than logic or practicality. And all my life, I have been discouraged from believing that dream was valid.

My parents told me it wasn’t a “real” career.
Teachers told me I didn’t have the skills.
Potential employers told me I wasn’t good enough.

Those critiques don’t just sting—they sink in. They take up residence in your psyche, piling on year after year, until the doubt becomes familiar. Until you start mistaking their voices for your own. You begin to believe their truth instead of yours.

More than once, I allowed other people’s opinions to nearly extinguish my fire. I dimmed myself. I redirected my energy. I tried to be practical, responsible, and acceptable. But that fire never went out. It refused. It only smoldered—quiet, patient, waiting.

And I don’t know why it has been so difficult to make money from the very things I am good at. Because I am good at them. I’m a strong writer. I’m creative. My designs have merit. I know this—not arrogantly, but honestly. Still, the struggle persists, and the disconnect between talent and traction is maddening.

It’s frustrating as hell to feel called to something so deeply and still feel blocked from fully stepping into it. To know you have something to offer and yet keep hitting invisible walls. To carry both confidence and doubt in the same breath.

But that fire—no matter how often it’s questioned, dismissed, or starved—keeps burning. And maybe that’s the truest proof of all.