Skip to main content

Anti Ambition

Reading this NYT essay about anti-ambition being in the air, makes me think of how folks like me have been early to this trend by decades. It was harder then because the zeitgeist required an absolute devotion to work and trying your best and hardest to get ahead. I recall back in the day, seeing my peers getting promoted left me feeling confused, I was not even in the running and people were crossing finish lines. Was I doing something wrong? In my heart I knew I was not but rationalizing it mentally was a struggle. 

These days watching people get promoted makes me feel a tinge of pity for that person. They already worked 80 hour weeks, exceeded every impossible goal that was set for them in order to even get promoted. Now the goal post will only move further. They will need to need to make hard decisions about running or stopping because stopping may not be an option at that level. I get the feeling there are many others like me who don't want to take that next step, try and remain where they are or find an entirely different place where not being ambitious is normal and acceptable. 

Work is mainly, really, about making money to live. And then trying to make some more. A boring, ancient story. The future of work might be more like its past than anyone admits.

I am a firm adherent of this approach - work about making money to live and then some more for a rainy day, month or year. If I am working for more than that it is a crazy mistake that needs to be corrected. With age, I am more comfortable with my way and it being at odds with what a lot of my peers have striven more and achieved. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more