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Shawn Parrish's avatar

Hey, Kelly Sue

I feel like I am also pushing myself up against that edge in life. I just went back to school, at 51, to study computer science. Still writing and keeping the dream alive. Even though the WGA strike is done, I will be out on the picket line with SAG-AFTRA this week coming week. We need all the pieces to play! Oh, I'm stealing that line. "Do less, but better."

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Mike Lonergan's avatar

Kelly Sue, your vulnerability is heartening, your ambition is deserved, and you are loved and admired regardless of whether your unmet goals were perceived and noticed or not - in fact, at least for this one gallery-occupant, because you swung hard and didn’t hit your usual home run.

I swung hard eight years ago, making a huge transition in my career from a self-anointed product designer to a job title I’d never had (senior product manager). They offered me all the misfit toys, telling me up front that predecessors had all failed at smaller remote, and somehow I powered through the screening process. Not six months later I disastrously fumbled my roadmap presentation, and two months after that they not-so-politely excused me. I was 13 months out of work after that, and buffeted myself on the rocks of job hunting every week, much to the growing chagrin of my self-esteem.

Not a day goes by I’m not furtively looking over my shoulder, wondering when the relative success of the last six years will vaporise like the illusion I fear it is.

I swung hard, lost the game, and am now supremely *motivated* to succeed at who I am (Frigga’s line “Everyone fails at who they’re supposed to be, Thor. A measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are.” sears my brain to a nice smoky flavour.

Go be who you are.

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