Men of reddit: when did you realize that you couldn’t pursue your dream?

36 comments

  1. When I found out how low the pay and job stability were for paleontologists

    Hell, that famous paleontologist that went on Joe Rogan needed to bartend to pay his bills, and that’s one of the semi famous ones..

  3. When I understood reality and that this dream did not align with what was possible in the confinements of reality.

  4. I think probably seven or eight years old, but I just really got hit with it yesterday. I’ve always wanted to sing, but after 13 years and no progress, I have definitively realized I can never and will never be able to do it.

  6. Very early on, I knew that dreams were an escape from a cold hard reality. I used to daydream a lot.

  7. When I realized how little even the best people are being paid in here and how expensive everything is in comparison. You can’t achieve much even if you work your ass off, so why bother. You could maybe afford a new house if you saved absolutely everything you can during your whole career. That’s just stupid.

  9. I wanted to own my own restaurant when I was young. I ended up going to culinary school and working for several very nice restaurants, including a couple of Michelin Star restaurants. I started out as a prep cook, then line cook, then sous chef. Each time I leveled up, I’d work more and more hours. By then, I realized that the only people working more than me were the higher ups. I wanted a life outside of food. I also realized that I had never seen an old chef or restaurant owner that was either happy or healthy. Eventually I just said screw it. I went back to school and landed a job where I can actually have a life. I may not be the master chef I thought I was going to be, but I throw the best barbecue on the block, and that’s good enough for me.

  10. For a very long time I wanted to be an astronaut. I started an astrophysics degree and was miserable. Even if I could have achieved being an astronaut, feeling like shit all the time because of the work I had to do to make it happen wasn’t worth it. I also struggled with the math. I’m not a naturally good math person, but I worked hard to get through the hardest high school math classes. Once I got to university however I was putting in so much work and scraping by or not even passing. It was just miserable.

    So I switched degrees and universities to politics and now am much happier and more naturally talented at what I do. I can write essays on this stuff very easily and am holding a high GPA at one of the best schools for politics in the world. I’m going to be joining the Army and looking forward to a bright future as an officer.

  15. When my teacher quit halfway through my college course and I failed the course… never had a dream after that. Pointless to dream

  17. Unless I just haven’t come to terms with it, I feel like it depends on the day some days you are more positive than others, the way I see it I’ve done a lot more in my 25yrs than I thought and if that’s only a ⅓ of my life what’s stopping me from doing anything I want?

  19. I want to be a neurosurgeon but I don’t want to live like one.

    Game development just fits my interests, talents and personality more. I kinda wish I was born with a neurosurgeon’s aptitude sometimes lol. I mean, I can still go for it, going to medical school nearing my 30s doesn’t so bad or maybe even ideal since the soul-crushing studies won’t take my early adult years that way. But still, I don’t fit.

  20. When I was young I wanted to be a fighter pilot. One time, my dad brought me to an air show and people could climb up and look into the cockpit of a jet while the Air Force pilot answered questions.

    I excitedly told him I wanted to be a pilot too! He laughed and said “With glasses that thick there’s no way we would ever let you fly. Besides, you’re already too tall.”

  21. A decade of getting a band momentum- made it to the level of having a label and manager only to travel from gig to gig living in a van… it was snowballing slowly… the death of a member and the arrest of another halted every thing. I wasn’t willing to start from scratch

  25. I wanted to be point guard for the SuperSonics. Then they moved out of town. Maybe it has something with me being 5’10 and not that great at basketball but I will ignore that for now.

  27. When I was younger, I wanted a Ferrari by the time I was 40.

    I prob could have got one if I sold everything and bought an older one, but I’d grown out of the idea and liked property by then.

    Also, unless you’re born rich, the amount of work and lucknot takes to get there seems like a lot.

  28. Never. I was lucky enough to have achieved my dream (by age 22) only to find that it wasn’t as glamorous or exciting as I’d imagined. By 25 I was thoroughly bored doing my “dream job” and started looking to do something else

    Since then, I’ve sort of drifted from job to job, career to career, with each arising organically from the one before.

    I’m happy woth my life and have had a lot of good experiences, but since age 23 or so, I haven’t had a dream job.

  29. When the US military told me that my eyes were too fucked to fly, even with surgery. They said I could fly the cargo planes.

    So I became a rocket scientist instead.

  30. Well, my dream was to create my own comic book. I actually do work on it still, but more as a hobby now than something I want to pursue as a career. The problem is, it takes me 8 hours to finish a fully colored page. And with me working a 9 hour job with a drive that’s nearly an hour to work, that’s 11 hours a day that I can’t dedicate to my dream. But, I have to make money so I don’t have much choice. I work on it for a couple hours a day, but I can only get about 1.5 pages done a week and that’s no good if you want to release a comic on a monthly basis. If I had the money to pay someone to draw the whole thing for me, I would. Oh well.

  32. Well, considering that I started skating when I was a teenager, I knew that my chances of making the NHL were zero.

    So, immediately?

  33. I wanted to be a musician since I was a small kid,
    Did music all throughout secondary school (age 12-17 going 18), went to two music colleges after school and was gigging from age of 18 to 2020 pretty full on. Going really well but the pandemic absolutely took my confidence out of the music industry as a side man (side man: freelance player and hired to play with artists). This was because life was taken from every musician and it took the wind out of my sails.

    I then got an office job to keep money up, music is coming up again now but my confidence is shot in the industry being a reliable job.
    Most of my musician friends are doing it full time and it’s incredible, I admire their guts however I just am too scared to actually persue my dream.

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