JEALOUSY OR AMBITION: CAN YOU HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER

I’ve always said that I am ambitious. Directionless, but ambitious. However, recently I’ve been wondering whether I’ve been confusing jealousy with ambition. The meaning of the words themselves different, but their application becoming interchangeable in my mind.

Having ambition is considered a positive, driven, goal focussed, something you’d mention in an interview, or include in a dating app bio alongside a picture of a sunset and a quote about motivation, because you’re worldly and also so deep. But when you’re just ambitious generally, full stop, it has a tendency to lead one to thoughts of comparison and ultimately, and rather unfortunately, its close ally jealousy. 

I’ll set the scene: I’m ambitious, I’m perky, I try to smile a lot, I’m living my life and like most millennials, though I proclaim that Facebook is so over, I’m not impervious to it’s pull. I see someone on Facebook that I haven’t spoken to in years, as is the case with most ‘friends’ on the friends list, because of course you need to keep tabs on what your peers, even the long forgotten ones, are up to, and more importantly, if they’re doing better than you. Said person has just climbed a mountain, you have never wanted to climb a mountain, but all of a sudden you are incensed, you could climb a mountain, why haven’t you climbed a mountain? I’m annoyed at myself, I should have climbed a mountain. I’m wasting my life. No one else around me is wasting their lives. They’re all too busy climbing mountains. 

Whilst this climbing mountain story was for the purpose of hyperbole, I have had this same reaction to seeing others get married, go travelling, have a baby, get a promotion, open a new business and on my worst days, if they post a picture of a nice meal they’ve had somewhere. I’m jealous of conflicting things, like around the world travels and settling into forever homes, wild nights of partying and early morning trips to the park with children. Some of the things that I get jealous of are more tenable than others, but some, I don’t even want and some I don’t want right now. Yet here I am, looking like Kermit’s cousin I’m so green with jealousy. But why?

Lock down left me feeling far more comfortable staying in than venturing out. I’ve also undertaken the worlds longest renovation which has frayed my nerves and emptied my piggy bank more times than I’d care to remember. As well as me seemingly hurtling through my thirties, making some things seem a lot more imminent than they ever have been, children, marriage, finding my forever career. It’s left me feeling panic stricken, static and stuck. It’s heavy and daunting and it makes me act out in ways that I’m not necessarily proud to admit, namely, I’m jealous, or am I ambitious? 

Definitely I’m ambitious I tell myself, I want to be successful, but successful at what? I’m lost and in trying to find myself, I look to others, and in the tug of all of these things there’s a confusion. Am I doing life right? Could I be doing it better? Should I be doing like everyone else? I want what they have because surely it’s better than what I have. Surely. I must be doing life wrong.

I’ve sat with this and thought, really thought. Am I subconsciously craving some of these things? Am I just a bad person? Am I bored? Am I lost? I guess it’s a mixture of all of the above, though maybe just to be kind to myself, hopefully not so much of the bad person thing. I’m just a human person. So then, is jealousy just a means of our deepest selves letting us know what we really want out of life? Is it just our minds chance to metaphorically try on different versions that our selves could be? 

These are tough things to confront and so I don’t. I look at others and compare and it twists me, or rather as I twist to fit these ideals, I become twisted with jealousy. Maybe I’d be happier if I had done this, or I’d love to have done that. But instead I scroll. I don’t do. I sit and pass judgment, often judgements that I don’t truly believe in. Jealousy colours things in a way that obscures my vision, the opposite of rose tinted glasses, rather the sludge green turns my thoughts putrid. I want to be better and do better in all things, even the things that I don’t want. 

I try to remember that the joys of others do not take joy from me. The successes of others do not make me less successful. The losses of others do not make me a winner, but they also do not make me a loser. My life is my own, to make mistakes and triumphs, to walk down paths that I then circle back around and then forge new paths and get lost and fall over and get back up and everyone else is doing this also. And maybe there are others who look at me with jealousy? 

And they’d be right to be jealous, I have so many good things and good people in my life and of course from the outside, when you’re filling in the bits that you don’t know about a person with your own imaginings, it’s easy to think that someone has it altogether. But I wonder, do we ever have it altogether? 

I am ambitious. I do crave success, but I am yet to determine what success means to me and as I try to figure that out, there will be times when I look to others and comparison overtakes me and jealousy crawls within me. But then I remember; I’m a human person and with that comes imperfection and self doubt and self sabotage and selfishness, but that’s ok. Maybe my new ambition could be allowing myself to just be, through all the messiness of life’s possibilities and the seemingly endless possibilities of others, I ride the jealous-sea (lol), letting it lap at my edges and sometimes letting it wash over me, but never allowing it to overtake me. I’ll just keep bobbing along and just be. And just be.

(None of these pictures are my own; W Magazine & Green finger picture: Zoey Grossman for YSL beauty BTS)

THE ISLE OF THIRTY

I’ve been thirty for over two years now. It’s taken me that long to get my thoughts in order. I’m not sure if I’ve actually managed that yet. Some semblance of order? Maybe? 

My whole life, thirty has been like a little island in the distance, that the tug of life has swayed me towards. It’s a destination that seemed inevitable (untimely death aside) whether I wanted it or not. Whatever was happening in my life, time and its passage was the constant. One day I had my feet buried in the sand, waves lapping at my ankles, slowly the tide rose and I was drawn in. Sometimes I floated, sometimes I floundered, sometimes I swam, sometimes I sank, but all the times I kept going. The sun glistened atop the lapping waves, lulling me in further. The waves crashed threatening to wash me away, but still I carried on. Sometimes by my own volition, sometimes purely by the pull of the sea. 

To say that at times the waves were treacherous would be an overstatement, but there were some waves that crashed about me with such force that I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to regain my stride, that I was instead destined to thrash about, salt stingy my eyes, panicking with every glug of water. And yet it passed. Stillness cloaked me and my surroundings. Stillness overtaking the splashing. Stillness. And in these moments of stillness, I really saw. I saw those swimming alongside me, those swimming ahead of me, those swimming behind me. Some floating on their backs looking up at the passing clouds. Some diving deep out of view. Some lagging, some struggling, some cutting through the water with ease. All the same. All different. 

It’s in these moments when I can look beyond myself, when I can extricate myself from the tangle of my own thoughts and doubts and fears and desires, I see that perhaps there’s no right or wrong way of doing this life thing. We’re just doing. And the doing is done differently. Acknowledging this is powerful, practical, healthy. However, too often I veer into comparison, when self reflection becomes self sabotage. From great points of doubt have stemmed the biggest spirals of my life. When I toss my life jacket over board, when I hold myself under the water, goading myself to see how long I can hold my breath, watching my skin macerate - to what end? Even as I fight myself, I bob along. I make my journey harder, but the journey continues regardless, or perhaps in spite of. 

There are times when life itself seems out to get me. When I just happen to be in the way. When it’ll go through me and I gasp and cry, but still I move, eyes red, tongue thick, arms sore. I move. And as I float and thrash and swim and sink and float and thrash, I’m supposed to do things, meaningful things. Make relationships, romantic and platonic and acquaintances and otherwise, and forge a career and be successful at that career, (bonus points if you actually like said career), and create and raise a family, all whilst waves crash and sway, and all this is to be done whilst being a good person, a kind person, a funny person, a dependable person, a hard working person. A list is formed. I recite it without thinking, a mantra to live by, though it pulls me down rather than buoying me up. Waves crash, but I still have to do and be all of these things. To kick my legs and keep going. And smile. 

And then one day I’m nearing the island of thirty. Suddenly the vastness of the sea and time isn’t so vast. I have a few of the things ticked off the list, but the island is fast approaching and suddenly the momentum has overtaken me, I  can’t slow down. I’m thirty. I’m here. I celebrate but am I happy? My arms can rest, I can tread water for a bit, I look back to the faint outline of the beach that I came from. I reminisce about my journey here. Nostalgia blurring the difficulties so that they’re almost blotted out completely. But the list still remains unchecked. I’ve done some of those things and I am some of those things, but not all of those things. I’m thirty and the tick tick tick of the check list is now the tick tick tick of my body clock. I dunk my head in the cool water, but instead of it refreshing me, the cold takes my breath away.

I squint and pant and regain my composure - outwardly at least. The water stings my eyes or maybe they’re tears, my vision smudged like a water colour that drowned, but I adjust, seeing life out of the abstract shapes; another island, the next milestone - forty. I’ve heard good things about this island. People come into their own when they get there. I bury my hands deep into the sand of the island of thirty, then push off, shooting through the water.

There’s something strangely comforting in knowing that I made it to that vague destination of thirty. The challenges getting here suddenly feel less challenging. I start to think that it wasn’t that bad after all. The sand wasn’t that pebbley sand that sticks sharp to the underside of your feet. The breeze was nice, the sky blue, cloudless. But I leave, because I have to keep going. The tick tick tick continues, echoing in the vastness of the ocean, lost in the space outside of myself, but firm in the space of my mind. 

I glance at the list, the list that follows me, that strangles me, that tangles me, the list given to me with no sender, the list. I read and re-read, focussing on what remains unticked, tick tick tick and then I realise, this isn’t my list, and I swim.

(Pictures via: Pinterest)

I WAS GONE. DID YOU NOTICE?

Long time no ramble. It was an unintentional break. I still had things to say, but…

I literally forgot how to write. But not really literally, although the irony of using a word that’s lost all meaning other than as a mere filler, used with such frequency only secondary to that of ‘like’, for when the brain stalls and you want to sound emphatic and dramatic but words have given up on you so you’re left to drawl, ‘liiteerallly’, is not lost on me.

I grapple with my brain to shake some brilliance out of it. Rusty, shy, words don’t come and when they do they are stuttery like a machine gun without the lasting affect. I swill them around in my mouth, my tongue thick as I try to remember that word, what’s that word? Blank. My mind is blank. My thoughts however are constant. A stream that sometimes is ankle deep and sometimes rises quickly up beyond my knees, threatening to knock me over and carry me away with it. Too quick for me to write it down.

Sometimes I’m lost in thoughts so inconsequential I’m glad that only I can hear them - sometimes Kardashian centred, (rip Kourtney & Khloe as BFF). Sometimes big thoughts way beyond me, like the vastness of space and what’s really out there and the disappointment and relief that I’ll probably never really know. More often than not my brain is busied with worries, these thoughts are the worst. Their persistence tugs at me physically, punching through my day. Mostly they are ‘what ifs’, what if my meeting goes badly tomorrow, what if I don’t know the answer, what if I make a fool out of myself in front of everyone? 

For these types of worries they march on, rhythmic, palpable, echoing in the cavity of my chest. No room for organs in there, just tight with all the unspoken words. My stomach bottomless. My brain cloudy, distracted with the what ifs, but no woulda, coulda, shoulda-ing can give me that relief. Rather the clock ticks on, syncing to the pounding in my chest and head and shaking of my hands. It’s unstoppable. Until it isn’t. And the moment elapses. It’s over. Logic awakens and adrenaline overtakes. I ask myself ‘why was I so worried?’ It wasn’t even that bad. Until the next time when all previous experience is forgotten, replaced instead with the oh too familiar aNxIEtY.

And in between these bouts of anxiety is the after worry, like an after shock. The adrenaline of having overcome whatever situation nearly consumed me, wears off and the confidence that I survived whatever situation I was dreading, dissipates. My thoughts busied with what I think happened vs what actually happened. The edges of reality blurred with my own recollections. 

It’s exhausting. My respite was writing. Focusing the jumble of my mind into words of meaning. My brain on pause, focused totally on whatever stream of fashion consciousness I was wrapped up in. Complete conviction behind the keyboard. Until my escape, escaped me. My thoughts on fashion never stopped, I was just no longer able to make them make sense. Critical thinking about the intersection of fashion and culture isn’t fun when it’s forced. Like a deadline I set myself that I just couldn’t meet. 

Thoughts when not expelled can be all consuming, yet it’s hard to choose an audience. So often you’re met with what is supposed to be a comforting, ‘don’t worry’. Doing little but to test my restraint. To have an audience is to have a mirror up to your thoughts - how do they react? is it in proportion to how you’re reacting? or is it worse? better maybe? 

To see someone react to the very words that you’re struggling to verbalise is to see another person express what has until now been expressionless - the inner workings or failings of one’s mind, exposed. Perhaps that’s why I choose to write. Who even knows if anyone will read this. Does it even matter? My worries matter to me. My ramblings rated only by myself, on a scale created only by myself. So here it is. All out on the page. I guess I can write after all. 

So to summarise, I’m back. Happy New Year!