One of the well-known facts about wealth is that as you make more money, your demand for money increases. If you’ve lived on $3,000 a month for five years and dreamed about how all your problems would go away once you made $6,000 a month… well, it’s no surprise that those “inconveniences” don’t always disappear. If anything, the list gets longer—even though you have more resources to put out fires

I was sitting in a meeting this week, and the speaker mentioned a “big ask list.” A list written by a dreamer—someone envisioning limitless potential in their future. In second grade, when we were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we confidently responded, “An astronaut, a surgeon, the president, a ballerina.” We had no concern for the effort it would take to get there or the sacrifices along the way. Our minds simply imagined what being an adult might look like. Maybe we would train with NASA, go to space, and live among the stars. After we got bored of space, we would come back to Earth and write a romance novel—one that would top the New York Times Best Sellers list within days of publication.

As we got older, our dreams became more practical, but we still daydreamed about what we could be. In college, we pictured ourselves driving a cool car, earning a 4.0 GPA, getting married in a silky ballgown, and conducting research at a top university to help discover new cancer treatments. The sky was always the limit.

The beautiful thing about a childlike imagination is that, for most of us, we saw ten different futures for ourselves. In the same year, we could daydream about being a wife, a med student, or an activist fighting for human rights around the globe. Our hobbies reflected this uncertainty about the future as we dabbled in everything—sports, music, academic clubs, church. We put ourselves in every possible crowd as teenagers, desperately trying to figure out which version of the future fit us best.

Once that identity crisis ran its course, our dreams and goals narrowed. We stop dreaming quite as big, and becoming an astronaut was no longer on the table. Simpler goals took priority: graduating college, finding a job that pays comfortably, finding a partner who you can love.

I am a dreamer. Someone actually once told me that my optimism about the future was overwhelming. The truth is, I am outrageously optimistic and driven because I am always in pursuit of more. At first, I thought it was just because I was born with a strong sense of agency—an innate drive to keep improving and moving forward. When I look around at all the boxes I’ve checked—the “dream list” I wrote a few years ago and how many lines I’ve crossed off—you’d think I would have slowed down. I thought so too. Not just slow down externally, but internally as well.

To be completely blunt, to have accomplished so much and still feel like I’m sprinting to catch up feels… wrong.

I’ve seen this play out with money in my own life and in others’. I wasn’t expecting it to play out this way with accomplishments—dreams and aspirations. The only times in my adult life where I haven’t felt like I was running full speed was when I intentionally stepped away from my life I built as a whole. When I was “frolicking” in other countries, meeting strangers, and being a questionably responsible adult. Reflecting on those moments i realize, I stopped thinking about all the things I could be and started dreaming again about all the things I wanted to be.

So even while running full speed, checking boxes, and crossing items off the list, the next time someone asks me what I want to be when I grow up, I think for the first time I’ll say, “I don’t know.” But I miss the seven-year-old version of me—the one who had the utmost confidence in her unrealistic list.