When you’re a kid, adults always ask you what you want to be when you grow up and we always had a definitive answer. Kids in class would say they want to be a firefighter, a teacher, a singer, or an astronaut.

At that age, we think it will definitely happen. We think our desires and passions will stay the same. We think it will be easy and that one thing is the ONLY thing you want to be.

We didn't know any better; it's just how kids think. Kids dream big. They shoot for the stars.

When I was younger, I always wanted to be a singer and actress. I would watch “Hannah Montana” and “American Idol”, and I dreamed of being up on that stage, auditioning and eventually becoming famous. I had this HUGE dream to be on either Broadway or Disney Channel.

People, but mostly my mom, would always gas me about being a good singer and actor. So, I thought I was a good singer and actor, and I participated in things that surrounded that.

In order to prepare myself for my "career", I joined my school’s drama club and got some decent roles. I joined a club called “Drama Kids International”, which was an acting class/ drama club kind of thing where we would put on plays, and even tried to get an agent. However, the agent thing didn't work out because my mom wanted me to focus on school.

Little me was so naive to think that my passions wouldn’t change.

I remember when I was in fourth and fifth grade, I would always write and direct little plays for me and my cousins to perform at Thanksgiving. They would all come to my house on Thanksgiving. I would give them the scripts and I would tell them what to do, and then we’d perform it for the family after dinner.

At the time, I wrote those plays because I wanted to act for the family, but little did I realize that I actually wrote those plays because I loved to write and boss my cousins around.

In school, I hated math, history, and science class, while others loved those classes. I loved English and spelling/vocab class, while others hated those classes.

I loved learning new words and writing stories and essays. I was always good at writing and I loved showing it off.

I remember my mom always telling me I was so good at writing and bragging about me being such a good writer. I never thought much of it.

“I know I’m good at writing, but I want to be an actress,” I would always say.

Even though I was always focused on acting and singing, in eighth grade, I was the girl who won an essay contest for our class. I won $50 at graduation and I never felt better. I think that was one of the first times I thought about actually being a writer.

I realized I wanted to be a writer for a Netflix show.

Actually, two: “The Carrie Diaries” and “Chasing Life”. I thought it was so cool that April Carver and Carrie Bradshaw got to go do cool things and write about it.

I also realized that all the main characters of the shows I watched were writers. Being a journalist, I would be able to travel to cool, new places and write about it, two things that I love to do.

After I realized I want to be a writer, I started to make my plan of what I want to do. I want to work for places like “Buzzfeed” or “Refinery29” and write books or plays.

One night, I was hanging with my friend and she asked me what I wanted to do as a career. I told her I wanted to write, and she told me about her friend who writes for a website that’s like Buzzfeed, called “Odyssey Online”.

So, here I am, writing for Odyssey!

I’ve learned the difference between passions that you’re good enough to make a career out of and passions that are meant to be just hobbies.

Throughout the years, I’ve realized I have hobbies, like theatre and photography, that I’m good enough at to do as just a hobby, not a career. However, I found that writing is something that I love to do and that I am actually really good at it!