What If This Is It?
As I’m walking along the street or quietly cooking dinner a thought has begun to needle at me: what if this is all I amount to? It’s a new one for me, and all the more surprising for that fact. Before I have puzzled over what I want to amount to, over how to amount to something, but not “is this it for me?”.
I know why this thought has started to follow me around. The chorus of rejections for my book proposal; regretful no’s, but no’s all the same. Staring a new job with thirty times more staff members of the biggest organisation I’ve ever worked in, and feeling like an overwhelmed small fish in a big pond. The inevitable come down after the anticipation of a slew of major, and long-awaited, life moments.
When we have an unhelpful and negative thought like this, even one we can give reasons to, the impulse is to push it away and dismiss it. To tell yourself not to think like that or to look at Nicola Coughlan reaching her career prime at the age of 37, as is being lauded everywhere, and tell yourself it’s fine.
It reminds me of when I was unhappily single and asking “what will I do if I’m on my own forever?”. It would annoy me when kind-hearted friends would dismiss this question, telling me to not be silly because obviouslyI would meet someone – but I couldn’t afford to not ask that question. I had to face the real possibility of being forever uncoupled so that I could be prepared.
The same feels true of this question too. I have to look at it, face it, to take away its power. What if this is all that I amount to? If I never publish a book, if I get stuck in middle management, if I never do more than I have done before – can I be ok with that?
My ambition is something I’ve been in a tango with for most of my life, an aggressive dance of action and reaction, of push and pull, of kicking out and drawing back in. I was always highly ambitious for an important-sounding job title in a cool-sounding company, until I was ambitious for maximum growth in a self-employed business, until I was ambitious for the most possible amount of ease and freedom, until I was ambitious for financial stability. And now, the dance seems to be moving into a new phase.
The question comes from this ambition. Perhaps in some way it’s a positive, a sign that the driven part of myself who made things happen is coming back to life after a long dormancy. But of course it also comes with a distinct lack mindset, and the living outside of the present, pushing for more, pushing for a future that is not yet here.
I would, of course, survive if I were to never publish a book. More people who want to write a book die unpublished than those who see their names on a spine. But I would feel bitter about it; I know, because I already feel bitter about it. And if I were to be unremarkable in the other aspects of my career there would be nothing to cushion that blow. If this is all that I amount to I will be fine, but I will always gaze out of the window and wish everything was different.
I surprise myself with the tone and language I’m using here. By how much these external markers of Success still feel excruciatingly important to me, even when I rationally know they don’t mean anything. Even when I thought I’d let them go a long time ago.
What I need to do is pull this all back into something that is more emotionally manageable, rather than let my ambition pummel at my life choices unchecked. Because underneath it all, what is really being asked here is “what do we want now?”.
As I said right at the beginning of this post, all my short term goals were ticked off this month: I moved in with my boyfriend, I started a stable full time job, I submitted my book proposal (albeit without the outcome I wanted), I went to the Eras Tour. In fact, so much was going on in May that I hadn’t even thought to plan or dream beyond the end of the month. This all opened up a vacuum that toxic ambition rushed in to fill.
This is not really a worry of never amounting to more than where I am now, which I know is logically unlikely. It’s a vacancy of goals and short term plans. It’s worrying that time is going to pass while I passively exist. It’s spiralling from not having direction.
All of which, I can control. If I had ignored that question, tried to push it to the back of my mind, I wouldn’t have realised what it was trying to tell me. If I’d allowed it to be too painful to look at, it would have continued to hurt me. But instead, by looking at it and unpeeling it, I’ve found there’s something I can do about it.
We have more power than we give ourselves credit for.