Balancing an equation

I’m at a bit of a crossroads. I’m happy with where I am in my career, but looking back I can see all the other paths I could have taken if I had made different life choices. I’m in my thirties and it’s easy for me to think that some paths are closed permanently to me. This is false, of course – I might not be able to become a professional dancer or athlete, but most paths are still available. Adults older than me go back to school or start a new hobby or career all the time. But the crisis is there for me all the same.

Last month I went to see my boyfriend in a concert. It was my first time seeing him on stage and I was really proud of him! I don’t like to think of us as rivals and I don’t want to be envious of his successes, because I know how hard he works and what success costs; but he’s said himself that we sit at the end of diverged paths: if we were to trace our decisions back through time we probably started at a similar place of talent or opportunity or artistic training. He chose to pursue a creative career and I chose a white-collar computer job. I don’t have a romanticized view of what it means to be a professional artist; I have seen the work my friends put in and the sacrifices they make in order to stay in a creative field, as well as the effect that that type of career can have on personal artistic fulfillment. I don’t regret my decision, but it’s impossible not to imagine how my life might be different if I have “pursued my dreams.”

I tend to tell myself the narrative that if I want to return to some of those dreams, I have to sacrifice something valuable. If I want to be in a choir that meets every week, I have to give up traveling to see my boyfriend. To become a practicing public artist, I’d have to give up my current career to start over in a new (creative) one. This makes for difficult choices, and I’ve ended up abandoning many of my previous aspirations at this type of crossroads. I originally gave up pursuing music professionally in order to become a missionary. I left my Japanese lessons so I could become a TA to advance my career. I don’t want to keep making decisions like these, which are so easy for me to look back on with regret, mourning a dream I’ve killed. Weighing two positive things against each other like this is a difficult equation to balance.

There is another type of equation, of course: it’s possible to trade something negative to get something positive. I think, for example, of someone who goes through a 12-step program. I’ve had my share of family members make the choice to give up something negative (chemical dependence, monetary cost, strained relationships, lack of control) for something positive (health, stability, hopefully a chance to repair things). I wouldn’t downplay how difficult a process like that is – there’s a reason that people turn to substances in the first place, and it’s a huge sacrifice to let them go. It’s not only negatives that they’re trading in. But in order to complete a program, the framing of the narrative has to be: “I’m giving up a negative to gain a positive.”

At my current crossroads I feel like I once again have to give up something important to me in order to move forward. I feel stagnant and stuck, and that that type of sacrifice might lift me out of my rut. But I’m not able to keep giving precious things up! Instead I want to scour my life looking for the negatives that I can use as payment to buy back the dreams that are important to me, and knit those dreams back into my life like one would a floating yarn. I don’t want to pay with the things that are dear to me anymore. No, I want to trade in my procrastination in exchange for fuller attention; I want to pay with my social media time to buy my creative practice. I want to give up my stagnant and stuck present in order to gain a vibrant and fulfilled future.