The Dream You Gave Up On

Last Saturday, I went to a football game here in Bangkok. Not the American kind, the real one. ⚽

But before I get to that, I need to rewind a few years.

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A club born from an NFT

In 2022, I purchased some NFTs. One of the projects I got involved in was Futera United, a Bangkok football club. The idea was simple: start a club at the lowest level of Thai amateur football and work our way up the leagues, one promotion at a time.

Being a holder gave you access to a private platform where, alongside the staff and other holders, you could actually help run the club. Choosing a logo. Picking the jersey kits. Deciding which players should start. A real-life version of Football Manager, a game I grew up loving.

So since 2022, I’ve been following Futera United’s journey, watching games online and staying engaged with the community.

Two years in the amateur leagues. Then two seasons at the semi-professional level. And this season (2025/2026), after just four years of existence, the club became fully professional, competing at the third tier of Thai football.

Last Saturday was the final home game of the season. It wasn’t an easy year, but the team survived and stayed up. That alone is a fantastic result.

After the game, I walked over to one of our players and asked if I could have his jersey. He kindly said yes.

📸 Receiving Phu’s jersey 🙏

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The symbol behind this jersey

His name is Phu.

Phu has been with Futera United since day one. Him and the goalkeeper are the only two players still here from the very beginning. Back in 2022, he was a teenager, our wonder kid. Now, he is a starter on a professional football team.

He became a professional footballer.

What was once just a dream for a kid is now his reality.

The journey wasn’t easy. Ups and downs. This season was especially tough for him. It took him nearly half the season to find his level at this new standard of play. But he got there, through hard work and sheer determination.

I don’t know Phu personally. The language barrier makes it difficult to communicate. But I wanted that jersey because of what it represents. It’s a reminder that dreams can become real. That if you work hard enough, believe in yourself, and have the right people around you, the impossible starts to look a lot more possible.

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What happened to your dreams?

We all had them as kids. Those big, ridiculous, wonderful dreams.

I wanted to be an architect. Then a paleontologist. Then an astronaut.

At some point along the way, those dreams quietly disappeared. I don’t remember the exact moment, but somewhere between childhood and my teenage years, adults told me to be more realistic. To focus on school. To get a stable job that paid well. Nobody said my dreams were impossible outright, but that’s what was implied.

By the time I was a teenager, the astronaut and the paleontologist were long gone. I just wanted to work in tech because I heard it wasn’t too tiring and paid decently. Not exactly the stuff of childhood imagination.

I’m not blaming anyone. That’s just how it goes for most of us. The world is good at slowly convincing us to lower the bar.

Too many people give up on their dreams and settle for mediocre lives. I say that not to be harsh, but because I believe it, and I think deep down, a lot of people know it’s true about themselves.

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It’s not too late

I stopped dreaming for a long time. Into my twenties, into my thirties.

To be fair, I was still enjoying life. Still achieving things. But the dreams I was chasing weren’t really mine. They were the ones people had mapped out for me.

It took a personal tragedy (you can read about it here) to wake me up to that. Suddenly, the comfortable path I had been walking didn’t feel like safety anymore. It felt like a waste.

So I started dreaming again, but this time for myself.

I dreamed about an unconventional life. No regular job. No mortgage. Seeing as much of this world as I possibly could. It sounded unrealistic to a lot of people around me. It sounded impossible to part of me.

But I worked on it. I worked on my self-limiting beliefs, the fears that had been keeping me small. I got clear on what I actually wanted, built a plan, and eventually, one step at a time, I turned it into reality.

That’s why I live in Bangkok today. That’s why I’m at a professional football game on a Saturday afternoon, going home with a striker’s jersey under my arm.

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If you’re reading this and thinking “yeah, cool story, but I’m not 19 anymore, those kinds of dreams don’t apply to me,” I hear you.

I thought the same thing.

But I don’t think the ability to dream ever leaves us. I think it just gets buried under years of practicality, responsibility, and other people’s expectations. Underneath all that, there’s still a version of you that knows what it actually wants.

I call it your inner child. And it doesn’t have to stay buried.

The dreams you reconnect with as an adult might look different from the ones you had at eight years old. They’ll probably be a bit more grounded, a bit more nuanced. But they’re still yours. And you still have the power to pursue them.

It starts with one thing: believing it’s possible.

In a world that can feel pretty heavy right now, I wanted to share this lighthearted story. Because Phu becoming a professional footballer at a club that didn’t exist four years ago is proof that good things still happen.

At the end of this strange, short life, you’re going to die either way. You might as well have gone for it.

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I’ll leave you with two questions:

What did you dream about as a kid?

And which of those dreams, or a version of them, could you start moving toward today?

I’d love to read your answers in the comments.

J