Early 2022 saw several sweeping generalizations about people losing their ambition. Not only in prodding tweets and choruses of, “No one wants to work anymore.” (cue eye roll) but in think pieces published by both the New York Times and The Cut. Often the writers of such pieces woefully referenced the pandemic being to blame for their own loss of ambition and with a hint of guilt for giving up or no longer wanting to hustle their way up a corporate ladder or toward a better job title or more responsibilities at work or or or.
I haven’t stopped thinking about this. Of course we all want to make more money none of us are paid enough. As one may say many times per day: “In this economy?!” Inflation— Have you seen her? What a monster. Houses— Have you seen them? Let me know because they’re hiding somewhere away from me. Retirement? Cute boomer past time, bestie. But I get queasy when folks shamefully admit that they’re tired and don’t want to fruitlessly outrace their fellow rats any longer. It bums me out when someone declares, steeped in humiliation, “I guess I’ve lost my ambition.” Because I don’t believe it.
I don’t mean to sound boastful, but my career ambition is low. Do I want to earn enough money to survive? That would be convenient for me and my central nervous system, which does not understand the difference between the stressor of not having enough money for rent and the stressor of a lion trying to murder me. But hustling my email skills so I can sit for longer stretches and answer more emails is not my idea (nor my nervous system’s, for that matter) of a great time. That does not mean I don’t want to DO THINGS and do them well. Including writing coherent emails.
Culturally we layer money and career over ambition. People who go to law/med/business school are ambitious because they’re probably going to make a lot of money. But my ambitions are just as big, despite being poorly compensated. My ambition to read as many books as I can. To write for at least three hours on most days. To publish two issues via substack monthly. To tend to my relationships in a meaningful and intentional way. To contribute to my local community. To be kind to myself and other humans. To go outside at least once a day (if this seems unambitious, perhaps you were not in a large city in Spring 2020). To play with my cat. To care for my corporeal being. To witness nature and be astonished and tell about it. To read more Mary Oliver. To eat incredible meals and laugh with my friends. Sometimes I’m so ambitious I want to to do many of these things in a single day! I have an unshakeable ambition to work less. To give less of my time and energy to things I don’t care about. On may argue then, that I could find a job that takes less of my time and/or aligns with my values in a way that makes me care about my job, but in truth, I’ve seen this line of thinking twisted into low-paid employee abuse over and over.
One may argue, too, that ambition by definition must inherently relate to rank or power or fame. As Merriam-Webster might suggest, “…the desire for personal advancement…” To which I would reply, is there any greater advancement than un-grinding? Is there not immense power in de-hustlefication? Name a harder flex than doing less. How better to advance your person than to walk away from a 50+ hour work week and aspire to touch more grass?
Certainly, mine is not the varietal of ambition that will be bringing in six or more figures in a year or have me sitting in a glass corner office. Mine will have me laughing so hard I pee a little at a friend’s joke while we eat ice cream and look at a lake. My ambition will find me asking aloud for the umpteenth time, “How are you so soft?” to my cat. My ambition will have me bawling my eyeballs out at 6AM while I finish the memoir one of the greatest humans I’ve ever met wrote last year. These too, are worthy ambitions!
So if you’re feeling burnt out and like you’ve somehow failed the Gifted and Talented kid test by losing your desire to get raises and leave your fellow rats behind, I implore you to think less about a loss of ambition and more about where it’s gone instead. Do you want to hang out with your partner more? Your kids? Your cat/dog/iguana? Do you want to sleep more? Time to enjoy the sunshine? More time to make things with your hands? Just because these things aren’t directly valued by our culture (I, at least, have not yet found someone willing to pay me cash dollars for hanging out with Friday, which does not mean I’ll stop trying) doesn’t mean they are not pursuits deeply worthy of your ambition.
Here’s to fewer rat races and more rat community and rat support and rat hangs.
Other Updates:
I have two new pieces out in the world (we’re feeling ambitious indeed)! Feel free to read my true feelings about all the authority figures who threatened children with trade school instead of encouraging their unique intelligence! And what I do at work when I’m waiting for someone to email me back.
Spring is coming in Duluth! We visited a waterfall in Wisconsin and were delighted.
In related news: I rode my bike to work for the first time in my new home last weekend and it was delightful. More bikes!
Friday wants you to remember to drink some water and get some rest today.
Ughhhh I love this so much. It's so hard to explain to people outside looking in -- being laid off last year was so incredibly stressful financially, and my body also can't differentiate between a credit card bill and a lion, apparently. But coming out on the other side has left me so much less interested in anything that doesn't *feel* right. I'm not even sure I realized how burnt out I was until I had no job to go to. I'm definitely still ambitious, but mostly to pay my bills and make art. I'm right there with you, sister. Let's get ice cream and go outside.