Where do your dreams go?

Where do your dreams go when you're done dreaming them?

I ask this because I've been trying to remember lately why I chose my profession. Don't get me wrong - I love being in public relations, and I'm very, very good at what I do. I declared my major in college and never looked back. I absolutely made the right career choice, one that I've never regretted. In the grand scheme of things, I'm probably pretty lucky to actually be doing (and liking) what I set out to do in the first place.

But that's not what I wanted to be when I was a child. The life that I have created for myself wasn't a childhood dream. Actually, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an entertainer. I wanted to be an actress, a singer, a fashion icon. I wanted to be rich and famous. At what point did I stop dreaming about being all of those things? At what point did I succum to reality and decide to be something more practical?

I sometimes wish that I had followed that dream. I was in drama club in high school, was in the school's talent show...I even wanted to go to Los Angeles the summer between my senior year in h.s. and freshman year in college to try to "make it." Looking back, what could I have accomplished in three months, really?

But I never followed through on that dream. I'm too practical for that. When it comes to my livelihood and well-being, I'm not a risk taker. I need to know where I'm going to live, where my next paycheck is coming from, etc. So even though picking up and moving to a basement apartment in Venice Beach sounded exciting (and still does, I have to admit) I could never actually bring myself to do it.

That's the same reason I didn't move to Chicago right after graduating from college, even though it is a city where I've always wanted to live. I had just graduated, didn't have a job, didn't have a roommate, didn't have a place to live...it seemed like the list of what I didn't have and couldn't count on was too long to even consider. So I opted for practicality and moved back home with my parents.

And I'm still there today.

So I look back and I wonder whether I made the right decisions. I look back on the dreams that I had for myself, and I'm not really sure when or how I decided they couldn't come true. And I wonder: Can we ever really be sure of the path that we create for ourselves?

Question: What did you want to be when you grew up?