Ever since I was a kid, I have always been academically aligned with other students. I'm not that competitive, but as long as I can reach their level, it's fine. As someone who has family members who are academic achievers, I have always looked up to them and been inspired to become an achiever myself. This has never stopped until I grew older and realized I never got to spend some time exploring other extracurricular activities.
I always saw peers with their own hobbies or talents that they showcased at school events, but I didn't really mind them at that time. My family always fought about money, and enrolling their child in a workshop won't help; worse, it will make us have nothing to eat. That's why I grew up being an awardee with no special skills. It's almost as if my personality revolved around academics and remained bland in everyone's eyes.
Dreams crush when your parents don't want what you want—they said to dream of something you can actually achieve.
Maybe your parents do want to support you with your hobbies, but for some reason, they just can’t. I grew up being family-orientated, yet I find it so hard to pursue hobbies because of my parents’ unending working hours, causing them to always be unavailable for me, so I locked myself and only wrote articles, but looked back and wondered if I had pursued what I really wanted—and while my friends have something to attend to and meet new people in their field.
Despite having such a pressured childhood, we grow old and realize that... you don't need to reach everyone else in order to feel worthy of yourself. We are given different timelines. Maybe someone's on their twentieth chapter, and you're just on your first, but hey! At least you have a long road ahead of you, right? You'll go through so much, and that "much" will give you enough time to figure things out until you are ready to enter that dream of yours.
People have their own struggles, and they all handle them in their own ways. Maybe we haven't seen their entire journey, but they worked hard for their ways too. Soon enough, you'll go through that. We all have our own interests. At least little by little, you can work things out for your dreams. As they have said, What good are wings without the courage to fly? So if it's meant to be, it will be.