How to Give Up on Your Dream (By Someone Who Did)

HASHTAG reality check - growing up is not all 'live laugh love' guys. That sounds like sarcasm but I mean it, there's a lot of 'follow your dreams' cushions floating around shaming you when you wanna kick back with a share size bag of M&M's.
When all the prints on Etsy say 'to travel is to live', not travelling (and, hello - not being able to afford travel!) can make you feel like you're not living enough. When you really need to throw in the towel on a project or goal, and all the canvases around you tell you to 'never give up', it can even seem kind of threatening. I actually saw one on my 'research' that said: 'When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful'. Um, no. Breathing should always be a priority of a different level to making your organic cheese company profitable. I am here today to be the anti-inspirational quote! I'm going to tell you how to give up on your dreams! Which will either make you feel better or worse, who knows. Take your chances, I'll try to keep it light.

I had a dream. I was going to be a dancer. From what I've said so far, about a dislike of quotes like 'never give up', you might assume I'm lazy, that I give up easily, that dreams I talk about remain just that - wispy, partially remembered, and sleepily wished for under skies growing lighter. Let's be clear - I worked fucking hard. I danced all but one night a week, taking on some classes completely voluntarily, staying in class til 9.30pm, and all of it alongside mainstream school. I attended summer schools, stretched and trained independently in between classes, auditioned two years on the run at a dozen professional dance colleges. Dance was what I was going to do, and there was no talking me out of it (a doctor even tried to after some knee problems). I loved the way I felt when I danced. I loved making movement from music, and there was a way I could actually be paid for it.
I got into a handful of colleges, but financial and living circumstances meant I could only afford the foundation course I gained a place on at, luckily, my dream school. At this school, I really was living my dream, just like all the Etsy posters said I should be. Sleepily starting the day in a glass walled studio with plies and the piano, being taught by people who would rush off after class to perform in Wicked on the West End, and always, always remembering to look up on the bus home at the London skyline winking at me as we rolled down Archway Road. In my final term, I had realistically evaluated how expensive it would be if I was to be successful and continue my training at my dream school. I got a job, working the closing shift at a McDonald's on Kentish Town Road, spending my shifts being told I didn't look old enough to work there, and occasionally being given a fiver by someone who asked about my very cliched dancer-dream tale as I mopped the floors. Working up to 40 hours a week, as well as the 30 I was doing at dance college, started taking its toll, but I couldn't stop. Professional dance college does not offer student funded places as the norm, you must get a scholarship or funding of some kind, or pull £15'000 a year out of your arse. A lot of students do get funding, a lot of students have family help, and then there was me. I'd used up more than my fair share of financial help from my family, and I knew I probably wasn't going to get funding from the college. I was thin, I was exhausted, I was crumbling. I cried in a few lessons. I spent any time I wasn't working or dancing in bed. I was shocked by the way the industry seemed to be going and devastated by how little jobs there were for the kind of dance I loved. I was living my dream, but I began to dream about how life would be if I wasn't. 

In June, I was accepted onto the full professional dance course at this perfect school and I cried. I cried with huge choked up breaths, unable to explain to my mum why she was hearing sobs instead of cheers. I was crying like I'd been condemned to the next 3 years, rather than awarded them. I took a bus to Kings Cross St Pancras station, sat outside and stared at the clock. As the hands ticked over, I imagined how my time might be if I continued dancing. Throughout training, I would be poor. I'd be doing the schedule I'd kept for the last 3 months for 3 more years, working to pay for training obsessively and unrelentingly. I would be too tired from work to get the most out of training, and I'd resent having to work more than my fellow peers so much it would make me bitter. I was going to work my ass off to be below average and unable to choose the work I wanted. I was never going to be as good as I wanted to be. If I chose dance now, I was choosing to continue being very miserable for the next 10 years. I probably wouldn't have the money to travel, and I probably wouldn't have the money to set up a life for myself after it. For 15 years I'd loved it, but had been constantly chasing this person I hoped to one day be. 'If I do this class I'll be the dancer I want to be'. 'If I can get that job I'll be happy'. 'If I work this hard that teacher will think I'm good enough'. Dance was my dream, but it was now clear that it wasn't going to make me happy tomorrow, the next day, or a year from now.

Staring at Kings Cross and realising I was considering giving up, I cried again. And then I remembered another dream I'd once had. When I was younger, I wanted to go to Hogwarts. I wanted to make potions and be friends with Hermione and curl up in a chair in the library to read books about dragons. I could have 'chased that dream' and 'never given up' until my dying day, but I would never have been a wizard. Some dreams are not possible. Some dreams aren't possible for anyone, and some dreams aren't possible for everyone. Attending Hogwarts for real is (sob) sadly not possible for anyone, and being an amazing dancer just wasn't possible for me. It would have been foolish and heartbreaking to continue with dance, just as it would be foolish and heartbreaking for me to spend September 1st running at a wall in Kings Cross. 

I promise I'm nearly done now, I just have some closing tips, or gentle encouragement, for anyone who might need to give up a dream. I say need because sometimes it is something that needs to be done, for your own wellbeing.

- There is more to your identity than your dream. I was known as one of 'the dancers', and I'd never wanted to do anything else. I was convinced all of my good qualities only existed if dance did. Wrong! I wasn't just driven in my dancing ambitions, I'm a driven person. Know that without your dream you are still a whole person. Your qualities still exist without this thing you've been chasing.

- It's okay if it takes you a while to figure yourself out again. You're still a whole person without your dream, but of course it feels like you're not. You can grieve for it. Take a break, read some books, pat yourself on the back for getting as far as you did, and for being brave enough to let go. I still cry at every single dance or musical theatre show I see, even the happy numbers.

- Recognise that giving up one dream gives you the freedom to pursue another. You can choose anything! After I'd told my parents and my close friends I was giving it all up, I jumped on a bus, and ran down Oxford Street, looking at each person I passed thinking 'I could be you..I could be you..wow I could be you'. You might open a bookshop, you might get a PHD in astrophysics, you might work in an art gallery in Spain. You might just enjoy a really beautiful day that you would have missed out on otherwise.

You can give up doing something you love, and still love it. A year after I quit, my mum worriedly asked me if I was going to be okay as the curtain lifted on my sister's dance show. I wasn't sure, but just hoped I would be. Free of my sadness in not being good enough, free of my frustration that my hard work wasn't working, free of my dream to be this imagined perfect dancer, I loved dance more than ever. Rather than it being a source of insecurity, a reason to beat myself up, watching my sister dance was just pure joy. I feel the most wholesome pride watching my friends dance and successfully forge careers in dance, something I'd never experienced whilst buried under the pain and insecurity of not being as good as them at something I loved so much. If you love something, let it go. Wall prints can tell you to never give up, but sometimes you need to. I say need and really mean it. If you spend more days crying than smiling you're allowed to give up. And honestly, it's not even giving up your dream, if it's not your dream any more. Go find a new one. 

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