I boxed up ambition today. I laid it on top of the grey tissue paper in an old Aldo shoebox and flapped the ends of the tissue paper over it. I replaced the lid on top and stuck a rubber band around the box. I carried it downstairs to the corner of the garage and stashed it in the far left corner along with my worn out running shoes.
I didn't want it lurking around anymore, reminding me of what I should be doing, where I should be in life. I don't even know where it gets its notions. I mean, how should it know where I should be when I am clueless myself? I am tired of it nagging me to go out and network, to advance my career, to be on top of my game. And then the hypocrisy of clicking on its watch to remind me of my ticking biological time bomb while holding up images of how I should look, how I should dress, how I should carry myself. I am done with fending off failure, living against death.
I'm going to try just existing for a change, existing for the sake of existing. I'll wake up and lounge with my hair unkempt. I will stop accounting for the things I have done throughout the day to tally up my time. I'll embrace my job that is just a job that carries no prospect of advancement, a simple exchange of time and labor for money. I'll stop answering to that voice that keeps goading, what do you have to show for yourself?
A few months ago, I heard from a college friend who summed up her past few years with belly dancing, hat making, art history, and archeology. One thing led to the other, she said. I want to try this type of living, where there is no neat sum, but a collage of different experiences that answer to the divergent needs and wants of the body.
Your blogs are like a symphony to my ears, at times, they feel like Mozart, at times like Brahms, at times like Wagner, depending on the beauty, tension, or drama of the quotidian event you are capturing.
ReplyDeleteOne theme underlying several of the entries is the search for significance and meaning. It is as if events, only make sense if we could see how they are part of a bigger, more comprehensive picture which eludes us at the moment. Another theme is that of freedom. Are we or how free are we in our choices of everything we do here and now, children of immigrants from less free societies?
I hear you - I'm a somewhat, generally mostly, content-enough lawyer in a firm (after two hideous jobs from hell found a humane group and work I don't loathe) but I'm really starting to envy the legal secretaries and the people I know outside who don't have Big Professional Jobs and Big Ambitions but DO have the time to explore their interests, travel, teach weird arty things etc. But of course, I'm too chicken to step off the path...
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that you are tackling this subject because I think that for many of us who had other interests and strenghts, but then went into law, the way to heal from having our square peg selves beaten into round holes is to realize that the law job wasn't all that, that our big ambitions to be big partners weren't really ours - or weren't all that at all, that being a big law firm partner is about as unimportant as anything else, and that it's all a bunch of hot air and BS.
Then, when we've let go of the institutional self importance and delusion, we can start to be ourselves instead of costumed dummies.
I've been reading your blog and wow, you are a greaT writer.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know how publishing works... But I thought that maybe you could publish some your entries here, and other things like "Ambition."
I know you said that you let go of your ambitions(?) And that didn't want to be pigeonholed into one career path(?) whatever your goals may be, a writing career would be great for you. And a gift to those who read your work.