It's never easy to let something go or say goodbye. This has been proven time and time again, from dramatic partings in movies, to just saying goodbye to someone you love. But it has always been harder to let go of ideas. Especially when those ideas run and run around in your head daily like racing horses. Ideas are never quite concrete, which makes it easy to hold on to them for longer than necessary.

There are times in life where those ideas need to be lost so a person can grow and move on properly. One of those moments is when you have fallen out of love with your dream goal. This is something that has been going around in my mind for a long while now. It has been hard to come to terms with, but I think I may now be ready to say it. I believe I have fallen out of love with my lifelong dream.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be an actress of some sort. Even when I was a little kid, I adored those moments when I could get on stage and recite a script that audiences enjoyed. At a young age, I'm not quite sure what it was about acting I loved. Now that I'm older, I know that I love the way that acting can bring a story to life. Acting brings to life the story of the play so much more strongly than any other medium. There is this element of connecting directly with the audience, of having no barriers, that makes acting in a theatre so exciting.

It has been my dream for so long to be an actress. Especially in theatre. I've always loved that closeness that I mentioned before with the audience. I loved how it brought stories to life and impacted people. Yet there has been something in acting that I have been missing recently.

I've been having a lot of trouble of getting the opportunity to act. There just aren't enough roles and shows to go around for everyone, especially in an educational environment. There, you are constantly competing with the same people or the same types of people. Seeing them get those roles instead of you when you've worked so hard and put in a ridiculous amount of effort can get exhausting. It eventually wears you down and tears you up inside.

I once loved this amazing art form that both excited and inspired me. Now I sort of resent the theatre, especially at the college level where I am right now. I'm having a hard time justifying all this work I'm putting into something that is refusing to love me back. I wasn't getting the experience I wanted or the opportunities to grow that I needed. It really made me question about how much I wanted this lifelong dream I had held onto for so long.

I think I have come to the conclusion that my dream has changed. I am unhappy trying to pursue this old dream, so can it really be a dream if it isn't positive? A dream in most cases is supposed to be idyllic and a good thing or idea. So shouldn't I be dreaming about something that is positive instead of so negative in my life right now?

If a dream should be something positive, shouldn't we be looking at the things we are doing in areas of our lives that are going right at the moment? For me, that is the part of my life dealing with my communication degree and radio. At the moment, I'm the production director for our college radio station. I have a lot of responsibilities and people in the station trust me and count on me for important aspects of the station. If I'm being completely honest, that feels good. I like being trusted and feeling like I'm valued not only by my professors but also my peers.

That's something I'm not getting in my theatre education. I feel like I get lost in the background and it's not a good feeling. I don't feel like part of the community, which is extremely difficult for me. So in part, it has diminished the dream I had.

There is also the fact that in radio, I enjoy all the different parts that make up the whole. I enjoy being on air as a music personality. I enjoy being a part of our sports broadcasts. I enjoy working on the copy for news, reporting, and airing newscasts. I enjoy working on the production aspects in the studio. Heck, I even occasionally enjoy some of the engineering portions of the job as well.

With theatre, it's not like that. I enjoy acting immensely. I like directing and coming up with an image for a show. I like designing costumes and doing makeup. Lights are okay, as I enjoy heights, sound outside of the computer program QLab can be fun. I'm not great at building things like sets. Painting is exhausting as it happens late at night. Run crew feels like a nightmare as I stumble around in the dark. I don't enjoy everything and I usually don't get the experiences I want.

So if I'm not getting the experience I want or need, even with a ridiculous amount of trying, why do I bother? That has been my thought night in and night out. Why am I spending so much time on this dream that I'm not getting any experience in that I need? I'm not progressing in my art form, but actually regressing. It's basically the exact opposite of what I need.

This is why I am letting go of my previous dream. I have fallen out of love with being an actress. I'll still be a performer, but it will probably not take the form of acting on a stage. That is okay. I need to remember that. It is okay that I let go of this dream and move on. I can't cling to something that will not happen, even with a ridiculous amount of hard work. It's a part of growing up to recognize this and move on from it.

While it may be extremely difficult to say this, it is my truth. It is fine that I have fallen out of love with my childhood dream and move on to the next dream. I can now reach for the next dream. Hopefully one day you'll hear me on the airwaves narrating a hockey game as the play by play announcer. But until that day, I'm going to keep working at getting better with my sports announcing skill set.

I'll enjoy theatre on the side as something I still love dearly. But I have moved on from my former dream. It's okay if you have too. Falling out of love with your dream is normal and fine. It's time to move on, and that is all right.