The High Price of Pursuing My Dream

“It turns out that the American Dream was never my dream. Rather, it was competing with my dream, clouding over my revelatory desire to be a literary writer. The big house, the fancy car, the impressive job title, the six-figure salary, the superfluous stuff. I had all of it. But none of it made me happy. And none of it allowed me to pursue my dream.

Instead, there was a void. Something was missing. I didn’t know what that void was, and working 70–80 hours a week didn’t give me much time to explore its cavernous interior.

And so before I left my job last year, I had to pay the price for my self-indulgent twenties as that scarred decade descended into the cloud-cluttered horizon. I could no longer afford the lifestyle I’d been living during my mindless twenties, a cog in a wheel of greed and lust and happenstance. Instead, it was far more important for me to pursue my dream—to pursue my passion for writing—than it was for me to keep living that empty, opulent lifestyle, a lifestyle which, by the way, was not bringing me happiness.” Get more here: The Minimalists | The High Price of Pursuing My Dream.