Dear Abyss is ready to launch, so I’m making new words. It’s another column.
If you insist on proceeding, though, if you demand you be allowed to weave yourself a chrysalis and transform into a kernel developer like a panic-prone memory-dumping file-corrupting butterfly, immediately separate your dreams from your goals. A goal is something actionable that is completely within your control to achieve. Accomplishing a dream requires other people intervene on your behalf. Going out for a dinner date with that attractive person? Totally a dream. Asking that attractive person out for a dinner date, and when they remind you that you are inherently unloveable leaving them the heck alone instead of stalking them like the creepy hero of a so-called “romance?” An absolutely achievable goal!
You cannot control other people. Work on goals. Never on dreams.
I babble a whole bunch about dreams versus goals in Domesticate Your Badgers. And seriously, if they turn you down leave them the hell alone.