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Hello,
How’s it going? I realise the answer to that question will depend largely on where you live (amongst a million other variables). It’s a bizarre thing to me that we are globally experiencing the same catastrophe, yet our prescriptions, our imposed rules, are so vastly different. This country is already so small in that my closest circle of friends geographically span three different counties whilst only being half an hour away from one another, but we now also span three different ‘tiers’. But then again, most of what we encounter in life is universal; love is universal, grief is universal, it’s just our interpretations that provide nuanced experience. Everything is the same and also nothing is the same.
Anyway — one day I’ll be able to write hello and get on with the thing without falling into something unnecessarily deep. One day.
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When I was about thirteen years old, I took this pledge to myself: never let a man get in the way of my career. I don’t quite know what warranted my pre-teen self to make such a declaration given the fact that I’d never had a male friend let alone a boyfriend, but that was the pact. Much in the way our younger selves think quicksand will pose more of a threat to us than it inevitably does in the day-to-day (for me, the thing I was most worried about running into on-the-reg was cannibalism — thankfully I haven’t yet), it’s also kind of sweet that my younger self thought my adult life would be a brutal tug of war between ladder-climbing and male attention: I’m still waiting to be headhunted, still waiting for a man to sweep me off my feet in such a way that I forget I even have a day job.
I think what it was is that I was always ambitious. And I have the rap sheet to prove it. I’d managed to weasel my way into having a regular press pass for London Fashion Week before I’d even sat my A-Levels. I didn’t spend my very first night in London getting to know my flatmates, I worked at an event so garish, flamingos wandered in and amongst the guests. I was the course representative at my university. I launched and published two issues of my own print magazine before I had even graduated. I wanted to do all of the things and so I would do all of the things. Nothing seemed out of reach, everything was possible because I simply decided it was.
But I don’t feel like that anymore and if I’m being totally honest, I haven’t for a few years. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve run out of ambition. Spent my lot. I look to my friends and peers who seem to be only just getting started and I feel exhausted. I see Insta-quotes from other business-owners that squawk it's not 'do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life', it's 'do what you love and you’ll work super fucking hard all of the time' and I can’t relate. I do not hustle 24/7, nor do I want to. I feel guilty that I do not want to. I feel small when it’s 10pm and I’m asked what I’m up to and I’m reading a book instead of working on my website SEO. I didn’t set any goals at the beginning of 2020, only that I wanted to survive. It’s funny how we can make fun of those who ‘peaked’ in school, but now I wonder whether I am one of them.
What I thought I wanted to say next was that it’s okay to not be ambitious, to not want impressive things, to be content with a humble life, but as I’m writing this, I realise, I don’t think it’s that I’m less ambitious, it’s that I have moved the goalposts. That it isn’t a loud life that is indicative of ambition, it’s alignment that is.
I feel more of a writer now than ever before. More so than when my words were regularly being featured in magazines, more so than when I was blogging every week and receiving recognition from the British Fashion Council. Nothing has made me feel more like a writer than having it run off the quietness of its own supply. Writing every day for the self, for my own practice, for my own untangling of life and having it draw nearer the mark of the work I truly aspire to create.
I am ambitious to read lots, I am ambitious to love well, to see places. I have become the kind of person that asks hypothetical questions relentlessly: Grandma, if you could go out for lunch anywhere tomorrow, where would you go? Dad, if you could curate your own festival who would be your three headliners? Ethan, if you had to relive one year of your life unchanged, which age would you pick? Girls, who would play me in the movie of my life?
Maybe I always was that person, maybe it’s just more heightened now that self isn’t surrounded by the platitudes of a girl trying on different lives for size. Who didn’t know what the end goal was, only that she wanted to reach for the stars. And whilst most of the time I’m still not entirely sure what it is I want, every year I feel myself less distracted by what it is I do not. Which means less ridiculous celebrity anecdotes to bring home to my friends, fewer bylines in the meantime, a life that is significantly less sexy on the outside. And though sometimes the ghost of myself lingers, whispering that I should be doing more, that I should be aiming higher, I know that I’m playing the long game now. In some ways I guess it’s easy to go after a life that so obviously looks like what it is you are supposed to want. But it is bold to not need to prove yourself or perform as someone who wants success only for success’ sake. It is ambitious to admit that you want to chase one big, impressive, voluptuous life — not just the career milestones.
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