Your journal prompts this week:
What do I think makes someone "impressive"?
What do I think would make me more “impressive”? Do I really need this in order to enjoy my life now?
Where is there joy and opportunity to help others in the place or “level” I'm at right now?
Why is the life I have right now beautiful and worthy of fully living and appreciating?
A quick reminder: You are invited to submit your own writing in order to be featured on an episode of the Soul Journaling Sessions. Your writing can be inspired by one of the prompts this week or from a previous week, or it can be a completely original piece of writing. Get more details and submit whenever you feel called to share.
I'm going to admit something that I don't like to admit and that makes me feel some degree of guilt and shame: I have a very expensive, very "impressive" college degree that I don't really use and may not even need.
My parents, who themselves were never able to go to college, made big financial sacrifices for me to get this degree. As a high school student, I sacrificed my personal peace and the enjoyment of much of my teenage years just for an opportunity to get this degree.
As an adult, I realize now that we didn't just pay for a "top-tier" education. What we paid all that money for, what we made those sacrifices for, was for me to seem very impressive.
Why did we think I needed this? Because when you get an impressive degree, you get a very impressive job. When you have a very impressive job, you make lots of money. You then become a very impressive person. And very impressive people live happily ever after—right?
I did go on to get those impressive jobs. I liked them at first, feeling very caught up in the impressiveness of it all. But then I inevitably got sick of playing the corporate games, of constantly trying to "climb the ladder," to prove I was worthy of where I was and to then take the next step up. I was the worst version of myself in these jobs.
If you looked at my resume and saw where I am now, you might think I lost my way. Or at least that's what I think others will think—especially those I went to school with. I mean, there are definitely no school alumni magazine editors reaching out to ask me to share my "how I got here" success story. And I never made that “20 under 20” or “30 under 30” list I used to fantasize about.
Lately I have been contemplating this idea of "making it" in life, inspired in part by an essay from writer and podcaster
on Substack, where she shared an excerpt of an interview that the host of the WTF podcast, Marc Maron, did with Jeremy Strong. They discussed this idea or fantasy of "making it" in our careers and when to let that go, being okay with the "level" you're at.In my late 30s now, I am confronting this idea of "making it." I am coming to terms with the fact that I never made it in the way I was expected to and certainly not in the way that my younger self dreamed I would.
But if I'm being honest, coming to terms with this is something I've been putting off facing for almost ten years now. It first began to creep up on me when I moved back home after my failed attempt at becoming a television news journalist. I decided to start fresh and get a master's degree in creative writing, an attempt to right my wrongs with my journalism undergrad degree. (I had wanted to change my major freshman year, but my faculty advisor at my very impressive university talked me out of it, painting me a picture of my future very unimpressive life, working as a waitress and trying to write the next Great American Novel, while all my friends excelled in their careers and life.)
After I completed my graduate degree, I landed a fancy, impressive corporate job that made me feel a lot better about my current status in life, and I moved back out of my parents' house and into my own apartment in my hometown. I finally felt ready to see people from high school again. I was out to dinner with two of my friends from high school, and they brought up how I had won the Senior Superlative contest for "Most Likely to Be a Writer."
"But you didn't become a writer," they pointed out (because, you know, my life was already set in stone at the ripe old age of 26).
I was a little confused when they said this. I had a master's degree in Creative Writing, after all, and I was doing tons of writing at my corporate communications job. I told them technically I was a writer, I wrote every day at work, and I still did my own writing on the side.
They had little reaction to this, and the conversation moved on.
Flash forward to now, and I actually am writing a lot more, and not for a corporate newsletter, thank goodness. Still, I have not "made it" as a writer. And if I'm being honest, when I first started on this path, the fantasy floating in the back of my mind was that I'd turn this sudden career pivot into a giant success, and I'd prove to everyone that while I may have gone down a different path, and it took my a lot longer than I thought, I finally "made it" in the traditional sense, as a very popular writer.
But that is the fantasy, not the reality, and I'm left wondering, when the heck can I just calm down and be okay with where I'm at? Because a lifetime spent aiming to impress sounds exhausting.
It's really hard to give up the dream of "making it" that we had when we were young, and it's really hard to live up to the vision of "making it" that society created for us. After all, the non-stop messaging around us from school, work, and even the self-help/personal development industry is that we need to "level up," rise, elevate, become the best, most impressive version of ourselves.
It's generally viewed that people who are okay with where they are at, with not trying to move up or to show above-and-beyond commitment, are lazy. It reminds me of that scene in Office Space when Jennifer Aniston is called out for only having the minimal amount of "flair" on her work uniform. How can one be okay with just doing the bare minimum, with just merely being average?
All of this messaging tells us it's not okay to be content with where we are, with who we already are. We always need to be in the process of upgrading to the next version of ourselves. And this process doesn't ever seem to end. There's always another level to ascend to.
I'm not saying it is bad to want to do better for yourself or to discover the best version of yourself. I do believe it's good for all of us to want to grow and evolve. But not so much so that it becomes something we chase for the rest of our lives, for the rest of our time on this planet, always feeling we need to have, be, and do, more, more, more.
What would happen if we were all okay with wherever we were at, in the present?
Honestly, I also want to know what would happen if all this energy we put into trying to "make it" or reach the next level for ourselves was instead put into bettering our communities and the world around us.
We're taught to improve ourselves first so we can do better for those around us. Again, there is truth in that, but how do we know we're ready? When do we allow the continuous self-improvement and striving to slow down or end? When do we start talking about what it really looks like to help improve our communities and the world around us—regardless of our personal status, level, or development? Most of us seem to get stuck in the constant loop of self-improvement, never trusting we have all we need.
I'm starting to think that the really "impressive" life is the one where we're content with what we have and where we are, and we don't wait until we reach a certain point to enjoy or lives and do more good in this world. We can do that right now.
And perhaps the true impressive person is not the one who climbed all the way to the top, but the one who figured out the possibility and joy in their right now, in their current level of existence.
We don't see this a lot because it is so hard to do. And while I'm pointing all of this out, I am far from having it figured out. I'm still in my head wondering if people think I squandered my potential, pretending it doesn't matter what they think but knowing it stings me nonetheless.
But this doesn't mean I plan to succumb to this thinking forevermore. I am doing the work in the here and now to clear myself of this programming, of this need to seem and be impressive, of this need to reach a certain level or feel like I "made it." (Heck, I'm not even sure that if I reached this so-called "making it" point that I'd even feel or think that I had or that I'd even enjoy it.)
I want to wrap this all up in some neat-and-tidy way, with some message or feeling of accomplishment. But that's hard to do when you're a work-in-progress.
Instead, I guess I'll just invite you all to join me in living a wonderful, so-called unimpressive life. I'll tell you that it's okay to stop striving so hard to be something or someone else, to "rise up." Because there's beauty right where you are and in who you are right now, and you'll evolve and grow how you are naturally meant to, at the pace you're meant to. Let's all do what we can to not delay our enjoyment of the present, for our inability to do that, I think, is the true loss.
Have you ever struggled with this idea of “making it” or seeming impressive to others? This week's journal prompts will help you explore this more, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
With much love and gratitude,
Marcy
The (so-called) unimpressive life