28 Comments

Yes yes yes. I think we all feel this way. “Shouldn’t I be doing more?” I’ve always admired you for both having such a big bold career at such a young age, and also knowing how to live a rich life which has *nothing* (ok maybe not nothjng but almost nothing) to do with money. I think - especially as we get older, I feel this now more in my 50s than in my 40s - that we can start to really just be present and live the life we want (whether that’s quiet or... loud and in technicolor ) make the choices we want to make and get out of anyone else’s expectations. Thank you for writing this piece friend.

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Jun 14, 2022Liked by Stacy Morrison

I love this! It’s a question that’s been bouncing around in my mind lately. Now mid-sixties but catch myself thinking “what do I want to do with my life?” Like you I’m loving a simpler way of living but my “ambition” hasn’t evaporated and like my libido it insists on having my attention…Thank you for writing this Stacy. It’s (as always) insightful and a delight.

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Jun 14, 2022Liked by Stacy Morrison

Hi Snaus. I have grappled with this same feeling since I quit my own big job to raise my kids. I dabbled I’m so many other pursuits over the years (so many continuing Ed classes, so many freelance gigs) to find something that could fit my mom life and my ambition. I had my own crisis during Covid when I felt time passing in a way I hadn’t felt before. Now, as you know, I’m a full-time grad student. The work is so hard. I pull all nighters. I have developed arthritis in my right hand from writing so many papers. I have stopped telling everyone what I’m doing (and have stopped belittling what I’m doing) because it feeds my soul in a way that hasn’t been fed in a long time, and I don’t feel the need to explain myself. The critical theory work reminds me of being in Hench’s class, with its combination of joy and pain. And I’m really fucking good at it.

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Jun 15, 2022Liked by Stacy Morrison

Stacy, you’re so beautifully ambitious and kind. You pour your heart and soul into whatever you do as a calling, not a job, and I think it’s wonderful. I think you’re awesome because you want to create change, for the good of others around you and for society as a whole.

Since the time you hired me when I was figuring out how to be creative, I now have 8 designers and a few admins and I constantly think of how nurturing you were/are. I finally have an inkling of what it was like to be you and create awesomeness for work and for my team. The hard work is cool cause we get to be even more creative! All the while, you face change w a smile or sometimes a swear word and always deep compassion for the “fragility of life”, as you once said.

You’re my role model when it comes to being a creative leader because of your excitement and inquisitiveness. You once told me you didn’t want your house to feel like it was “trapped in amber”. Your life will never be static like some gorgeous golden fossilized tree sap, but something way more exciting. I’ll leave you to pro wordsmith what that will be and then use that term years from now, the way I do your other sayings nearly two decades after you shared them w me.

Big hugs.

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I am a bit younger than you, but identify SO much with what you've written here. The parts that stood out to me were when you said to your therapist "but that's what I've been trying to do!" (perhaps by earning enough to "set yourself up" for a simple life? Maybe?) AND...when you described your super-ambitious landscaping and gardening efforts (been there...still trying to do that.) I think there's a sense deep in me that I won't really be able to have the "simple life" I want until I earn enough money to make it look a lot like Martha Stewart's version of a "simple life" which...well...I guess that's not really how simplicity works, is it? I have more to say, much more, but it's gonna have to knock around a bit in my noggin before it's going to be very coherent. Just know that I feel everything you've written deeply, even though my background and career trajectory and definitions of financial success have been very different from yours. Outward markers of success have been what drive me, and yet, they don't seem to be what I actually want.

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Jun 15, 2022Liked by Stacy Morrison

I sold the loft in NYC and now live in a restored villa in Greece overlooking the Aegean.. I simplified. I thought this was what I wanted. I have an enormous garden and fruit orchard. My husband, who was reluctant to make the move, is perfectly happy. Me? I'm bored and I'm lonely. I got my PhD during lockdown, all the while thinking, "When I finish this, what'll I do next?"

What DO we do with ambition? Good question, well stated. Now I'd like an answer, please.

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I never had ambition (or money) on your scale, but I can still relate to this--to wanting to achieve, to searching for meaning in work, to wanting what I do to matter in some way beyond myself. My field (public education) is so broken it was breaking me (literally), and so I made some living simpler choices that allowed me to retire earlier than planned. I did go back to part-time teaching in a sweet gig this past school year, but I'm leaving that now, too. And struggling with some of the same questions. I feel too young to be really retired, but also too old for a lot of things I might once have wanted to pursue. And too tired. The last 10 years took a lot out of me. I have said for years that I just want to grow food and make a nice home and care for my people, but now that I am in a place to actually do that, I feel...uneasy. People assume that now I'm going to write in some serious way, but that's not calling to me. At all. I keep telling myself that if I truly clear some space and remain open, the answers and opportunities will come (the way the teaching gig did, which was the perfect thing for me for this past year). But that's a hard one for me, who has always felt the need to make things happen and have a plan. I wonder how much of all this unease is just a result of deep socialization in a misogynistic, capitalist culture. Please let us know if you figure all of this out. :-)

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Jun 15, 2022Liked by Stacy Morrison

Well, it’s the systemic expections of greatness, right? Everywhere we look, every moment of our entire lives, there are stories of greatness. It’s true that oftentimes these stories of greatness are born of failure and subsequent perseverance, but what is the end result? A story of greatness. The narrative being, if you work hard enough, long enough, you’ll get there. We are indoctrinated in to the belief that with hard work we will be great. We will be admired, financially secure, people will seek us out to ask us the secret to reaching potential. The rays of a thousand suns will shine upon us. To my knowledge, there’s no one out there building a Nike ad or writing a feature for Forbes magazine that says, you’re good enough just as you are. We are supposed to strive for something bigger, more meaningful (meaningful of course meaning measurable). For the last five years I have been a full time bartender. That’s all I’ve done. I’ve put liquids in to cups. I left public relations, I left marketing, I left every other side hustle I had while living in Los Angeles to move to New Orleans and bartend. I’ll tell you right now, it’s been good. It was exactly what I needed to do at the time I needed to do it. I ate good food, I listened to good music, I met a good man. It has all been fortifying. Alas, it’s not forever. I have reached the point of, ok what now? My brain needs to stretch, I need to feel hurried, I need deadlines and schedules and everything that comes with it. I guess maybe the moral of my ramble is that ambition never really leaves you because it’s been fed your whole life, both externally and internally. It may take naps but it’s still there and sometimes it will need to be fed. I suppose our job is to find out how to feed it without getting lost in it.

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Cosign

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I love reading you again. As you know, I was able to partially break that overachieving mentality when I up and moved from Seattle to East Africa. For me, and I think for many people, it was a matter of life and death, literally. I was close to having a heart attack. When people get really sick from stress, they make real changes. I think it is human nature to wait until a major crisis before simplifying, and feeling good about the simple life. I also agree that there is a major cultural component here, American ambition, which has served us well in some ways as a country, has also contributed to our unwellness. What also helped me in the past couple of years is fully embracing my role as junior elder, in the Maasai way of thinking. Now is my time to serve the next generation. As a mentor, an Auntie, a coach. Yes, getting paid well for this work is nice, but I truly feel good at a deep level when one of my Godchildren, or clients lets me know that they got into a fantastic University, or the perfect internship, or sorted out a problem with their Mom. The wisdom I have gained is useful, and it makes my heart happy.

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Jun 18, 2022Liked by Stacy Morrison

I love this and am grateful you wrote it. You were really extraordinary when we were so young at Mirabella. You had your eyes open in a really good way. I so struggle with ambition. I pivoted from magazines into pharmaceutical copywriting and that's been a steady, deeply-uncool thing.

When I say pivot, I mean I kind of tripped over my own feet and toppled into freelance pharma and then stuck it out. It is just a job but it is lucrative and sometimes really satisfying and fun. But yeah, the creative ambition, what to do with it? I do a lot of volunteer and political stuff and sometimes that works and sometimes it's a bitter defeat, but I am very careful to only work with people I love and respect, so the advocacy/organizing stuff doesn't feel like work too much. I work on a book in a way I hope isn't too masochistic but is also a little bit rigorous. My eldest child, who had many learning challenges, is now off to the college of her choice while my youngest is having the time of his life in high school and skateboarding through NYC, so my parental worrying is low, and the parts of my brain that were busy with that are now looking around for a new thing to chew on. I can feel ambition nipping again.

Please write more!

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Brilliant. Antonia forwarded me your post because you captured that inside voice, that haunts me (and her) at times, won't let me sleep most of the time, and keeps me from fully settling in, to, well, life. My life. Which is spectacular, yet, every time someone asks how things are going and I say, "Great. No complaints." I immediately feel that push, that I should be doing more. Maybe it's because we did move mountains ?! Something we discovered in us, in those formidable years, that surprised us, and, well, was impressed, by our own power?! So you can't just plant a garden that you buy at Home Depot. I can't just feed my dog kibble, I have to research and read books about animal nutrition and then make my own raw food complete with sweet potatoes and probiotics. That's the part of myself I love, find interesting, entertaining, unique, but it doesn't rest. Doesn't let me rest. I appreciate that you don't have an answer, because neither do I. We will keep looking ! I'll keep paying two therapists and take long walks with my dog while listening to Sam Harris. Hopefully capturing those moments (even if fleeting) that I'm just happy. It's been decades since I've seen you, but sending lots of aloha from one cortisol-junky to another! Keep writing.

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