Student Blog: Plans Change & Dreams Grow

Yesterday I dropped my phone in a lake. Yep. I tied a jacket around my waist with it in the pocket, thinking it wouldn't slip out. Genius, I know. All the sudden I couldn't see it anymore. This wasn't what I planned. I lay everything out in my mind before it happens, I think it through and try and prepare myself for what's ahead.

I'm one of those people that needs to know what's on the menu before I get to the restaurant. But sometimes things won't go exactly according to my plan. No matter how much time we spend sitting and thinking about it. Sometimes they won't have mac and cheese and you have to improvise and order pizza instead even though you are lactose intolerant and shouldn't be doing that. That's not symbolic of anything, that's just me thinking about my pizza intake.

Okay, back on track. No doubt, it might be a pretty sound plan that we've crafted. Well thought out, extravagant. The kind of plan that has been building up for years upon years, the one you feel like you have to stick to. The whole "By this age I'll have this or that." In the past I'd often times get caught up in planning ahead, looking ahead and trying my best to stick to my what I thought was my master plan. Mainly because I was scared of the now. Because in the now, I don't know what's happening, I'm just waiting for something to work out. And sometimes that's nerve-wracking.

Before the pandemic I was a senior in AMDA NY'S Integrated Musical Theatre Program thinking "Okay, I'll book a show when I graduate, get an NYC apartment, and then I'm set." Well, that didn't happen. What happened was I transferred to AMDA LA because something shifted inside of me, I felt like I was suppose to go on to get my Bachelors Of Performing Arts Degree. I grew a new passion to not only perform but to teach.

I didn't ever think this a possibility or even a passion for me until I saw the looks on my peers faces when something clicked or when they had a breakthrough in class. It was magic. I didn't plan that shift. When asked the jarring where do I see myself in 10 years question...I don't know, my dreams, the people I meet, my passions, they are constantly changing and growing, they grow with me. I don't know what I'll be in 10 years when I'm 31 or even what exactly I'm doing now for that matter. But I do know how easy it is to feel uneasy when things don't go the way we initially thought they would go.

Change is hard even good change because we've clung onto the same dreams for so long and so hard that sometimes we don't realize there is room for more. It doesn't stop there. My new plan is allowing myself room for the plan to change, room for new dreams, to put one foot in front of the other, and breathe in the now. Leave it to me to relate dropping my phone in a body of water to something significant. I dropped the phone like I dropped the original plan, the plan updated.

All the contents in that original phone and original plan will shift onto another device and it will be added to, it will continue to grow. I see so much in the little things. I can't help it. I'll exit with this quote by Alice Sebold "Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had."