I don’t want to be one of those guys who blogs about how he can’t write anymore,
That being said, here we are.
Again.
I saw a quote from Ira Glass that basically posited that creative types get into vapor lock because they have problems meeting or exceeding their own standards. I think there’s something to that.
There’s also a little something about no longer being a miserable lonely fuck who hated himself and kinda needed to stretch out and figure out why that was.
It’s sad, but part of me misses that guy, or at least the urge that guy had to write everything down. This guy here and now is clearly in a better headspace, but there’s something else…
I’m a pessimist. That much is obvious. I think the lack of defeatism to partner with this pessimism dulls its impact more than a little, and allows me to use it constructively.
I’m also ambitious. I’m also afraid of failure. And bees. Then there’s that thing where ambition leads, ambition ends, and yet there’s no real mark of failure.
I need that mark – although I’m not at all trying to say I’m craving failure. What I mean is that a lit fuse proceeds an explosion, and to end up with a dud leaves you waiting for that explosion that never comes.
I don’t know if I’m in over my head yet. I really don’t. I’ve done some really terrific work here, so far, but the things I don’t know are becoming clearer and clearer to me every day. Take the ambition that had me chasing this gig, add to that the promotion, mix in the project plan for the next year, then two, then where does that take me?
I have a good guess at the answer to that, which was an incentive to take the transfer in the first place.
All signs point north (you see, that’s clever both as a metaphor and taken literally, considering what that next step might be). I want this, I think.
What happens if I get a big piece of it sooner than I had thought? If that happens, and I simply meet expectations, what then?
It’s not failure now that I’m worried about. It’s the plateau. It’s where ambition takes me, right to the ceiling and no further.
Someone on a reality program was trying to pay a compliment to a contestant last week and said, “the ceiling is the limit for you.” I thought that was hilarious (more so because the contestant was a woman and the advice giver a successful man in her fieldj), but that thought has stuck with me.
What happens when I light that next fuse and I don’t see the brilliant burst of fireworks light my path? And how do I know when I’ve hit that ceiling?
It’s that latter question that I think I know the answer to. There’s no sign, really. Just a slow evolution from the people who were your champions who then become the people who patronize you, but no longer facilitate your next opportunities.
A few years ago I worried every time my boss would drive across the state to see me. Was this the time he’d have figured out my fraud? Would I be fired?
I don’t worry about that much anymore. I think that, barring any truly royal screwup, I’m more likely to fizzle slowly when it’s my turn to stop climbing.
I won’t see the sign for my next step. My ambition will bang against the ceiling – blindly, at first, but steadily decreasing in will as I resign myself to my stalled career.
And really, ambition right now is all I have to brighten my future. I don’t know who the hell I’m going to be without it.
