Every year on this day my friend and I send each other a simple text. It’s usually just a heart emoji. It’s our way of acknowledging the significance of this day and how we’re connected by it. No matter what, we always think of each other on this day. It’s also the day that I allowed myself to go beyond dreaming.
I was a writer and producer at a television station in Ohio. One of the other producers became my really good friend. We worked together and hung out outside of the office too. We were at work when 9/11 happened. In our bosses office, we saw the planes hit. We watched countless hours of footage and had to prepare content for air about what we were watching. It was a lot.
What’s true for me
Everyone has their story about that day. I know my experience that day is nothing in comparison to what my New York friends dealt with. What’s true for me, is my life changed that day, like many others. My friend saw that change in me up close. I went from being content to work my way up in television news to deciding life was too short and I needed to change mine. My change happened in a matter of months.
My thoughts started churning. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I knew I no longer wanted to be in news. It was too much. Too sad. Too heavy. My heart had always been in entertainment. Pop culture was definitely my jam. I made the choice after 9/11 to follow a dream. I was either going to New York or Los Angeles.
After going around and around in my mind and with my mom, I had made a decision. I was going to walk away from my job and follow my heart. I remember walked to my friends office to deliver the news. Next to her desk, I kneeled down and told her I was moving. She laughed. She absolutely thought I was joking. I told her I was serious and that I was moving to Los Angeles. She went from laughing to shock and sadness. We were really close. This was more than a co-worker moving on. This was a friend saying I’m moving cross country!
Dreamer AND Doer
That was when I decided that dreaming isn’t enough and I became a dreamer AND a doer. I don’t know why I wasn’t scared. The thought of getting rid of all I owned and packing up what was left to move across the country should have been enough to terrify me. My dreams led me to Los Angeles. That dream led me to work for E! and Style. When I talk about following your dreams, it’s because I know it. I’ve lived it. What I also know it that it usually takes some big life event for us to really know that life is too short. As we do the day to day thing, we forget how quickly time passes. We always think we have more time.
As a mom, I’ve talked to countless moms who tell me about what they are going to do when their kids grow up. I’ve also talked to older moms who stress that they wish they’d kept dreaming and hadn’t waited until the kids grew up. The older moms all say, live now! The thing I’ve learned is while we’re waiting for the kids to grow up, our lives aren’t stopping. Time is still moving. We’re getting older as they get older. So all those things we thought we’d do seem to get a little harder to actually accomplish. We run the risk of talking ourselves out of it because we think we’ve grown too old.
If I learned nothing from the attacks on 9/11/01, it’s to live now. Here’s hoping I don’t need a simple text everyday to remind myself. How did 9/11 change you? How are you making an effort to live now?
8 Comments on When I Learned Dreaming isn’t Enough
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9/11 definitely changed us all in some way whether big or small. For me I don’t think I really felt as changed until last year when we visited NYC for the first time and toured the museum. It really put a lot of things in perspective!
I have to get there. I haven’t been back to NYC in years. I’ve heard about the impact of the museum.
Sometimes I can’t even watch the news (though I try to keep up on it) because it is too heavy, so I can only imagine what working in it is like! I was in 2nd grade when it happened, but I still remember going home and seeing the news. As time went on, I saw how 9/11 banded our country together and really understood the life and death job that first responders face. And today I learned that nearly 500 of those who died in 9/11 were first responders, so it makes me especially thankful that we have people like that who are dedicated for saving lives, who probably didn’t think twice that day before running into the attack head first. It also taught me that we (as Americans, especially) aren’t invincible.
– cassy | http://blissfullyher.com
I completely agree! Those first responders are heroes.
I am not American but I do think that day changed us all a little bit.
Dreams are dreams until we make them happen and there is no reason to wait to make them happen
I agree. Sometimes we have to just dive right in!