Changing Change

I am definitely not the same person I was one summer ago. I hated all manner of performance, I had almost no close friends, I was relentlessly taken advantage of and gaslighted, and I had no purpose in life.
And you know what? I won't be the same person next summer either. But that's okay. Normal. Even encouraged.
Change is a natural and innate human fear. I know what it feels like. Schools change, friends change. Looks, boy, do they change.

Even dreams change.
I've always wanted to write, ever since I was a child. With CP (read: terrible fine motor skills) I could barely hold a pencil, but I so badly wanted to write I practically taught myself.
Now, I still want to write, but not what I wanted to write in middle school. Back then I was dead set on YA fiction, fantasy, and anything with a dragon in it. Now? Well, those are still fun, but I also now have different influences. I went from Carolyn Keene to C.S Lewis. Magic Tree House to Hitchhiker's Guide. J.K Rowling and Rick Riordian to...
Okay, those are exceptions.
Now, I want to branch out to biographies and journalism, apologetics and parables. Maybe even historical fiction. I respect different authors and have broader taste.
I wouldn't have even considered any of the above even a year ago. I also would not have considered being a professor, starting a blog, or going into religion or divinity studies. My freshman self would think I'd had a lobotomy.
And yet, here we are.
Soldiers, dreams change. You're allowed to have dreams. Being different doesn't disqualify you from essential parts of the human experience.
And you're allowed to change. All people do. It's not a loss of passion or sudden rut if what you once loved has made way for other opportunities.
Nope. That's life.
That's growing up. That's finding yourself.
No one should be disqualified from that. No one should be afraid of that. It should be celebrated.