Its stench is subtle, but for Americans, ambition comes with the citizenship. Meanwhile, we Americans commute an hour to work and another hour back, stuff a McMuffin into our faces, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for our air-conditioned Garage Mahals we’re too busy to live in, disembowel each other for even a crumb of approval from our corporate overlords, and reward ourselves at the end of the day not with simple pleasures, but the kind of hardcore drinking and prescription drug use that knocks us on our ass and helps us forget we have to get up and do it all over again tomorrow.
I had to sit and stew on this one a while, because it held up a mirror. I like to pretend that I'm not governed by ambition, yet I find myself asking myself at least a half-dozen times a day, what the fuck am I doing? This is certainly not what I thought my life would look like when I reached this age. (I assumed it would be pretty much as when I was 40.) Things are made worse right now by my enforced break from my current writing project (taking a pause after 1st draft so that I can hit the 2nd w/ "fresh eyes.")
I know that "fallow" period between writing and editing can be ... unsettling. I go through it myself all the time. But I do recognize the stench of ambition. The very drive that makes me want to take up my pen again has its roots in the idea that being idle is bad, wrong, and lazy. Horrible, isn't Such a fine line between being a productive artist and an undisciplined one.
Over the course of almost 250 years of capitalism, Americans have acquiesced to a system that defines human beings as units of production. By this definition, the more one produces, the more valuable one becomes and the more rewards one reaps. There's a point, though, where we become like a hamster on an exercise wheel, trapped by our pursuit of more, more, more.
How much is enough? When will we know? How will we feel when we have enough? Who knows...because Americans collectively lack any internal mechanism for defining "enough." And so we continue the chase...until we retire and, shortly thereafter, die. The End.
We are definitely a young nation. I think one reason we try to hustle so hard is knowing that there are few livable wages out there to be had, and we could be on a street quickly if we don't hustle our side/main job. I see it in myself and my friends, some sort of cheerful desperation. Of course hospital and housing expenses, etc. don't help. This on top of that stupid corporate pushed idea that if we only work hard enough, we can 'make it' too. I feel like we are going to hit the wall soon, and hard. To be free of that desperation, to know that basic needs were going to be met... what a beautiful way to live, even with the grousing.
I had to sit and stew on this one a while, because it held up a mirror. I like to pretend that I'm not governed by ambition, yet I find myself asking myself at least a half-dozen times a day, what the fuck am I doing? This is certainly not what I thought my life would look like when I reached this age. (I assumed it would be pretty much as when I was 40.) Things are made worse right now by my enforced break from my current writing project (taking a pause after 1st draft so that I can hit the 2nd w/ "fresh eyes.")
But is that ambition or "just" expectation?
I know that "fallow" period between writing and editing can be ... unsettling. I go through it myself all the time. But I do recognize the stench of ambition. The very drive that makes me want to take up my pen again has its roots in the idea that being idle is bad, wrong, and lazy. Horrible, isn't Such a fine line between being a productive artist and an undisciplined one.
Over the course of almost 250 years of capitalism, Americans have acquiesced to a system that defines human beings as units of production. By this definition, the more one produces, the more valuable one becomes and the more rewards one reaps. There's a point, though, where we become like a hamster on an exercise wheel, trapped by our pursuit of more, more, more.
How much is enough? When will we know? How will we feel when we have enough? Who knows...because Americans collectively lack any internal mechanism for defining "enough." And so we continue the chase...until we retire and, shortly thereafter, die. The End.
We are definitely a young nation. I think one reason we try to hustle so hard is knowing that there are few livable wages out there to be had, and we could be on a street quickly if we don't hustle our side/main job. I see it in myself and my friends, some sort of cheerful desperation. Of course hospital and housing expenses, etc. don't help. This on top of that stupid corporate pushed idea that if we only work hard enough, we can 'make it' too. I feel like we are going to hit the wall soon, and hard. To be free of that desperation, to know that basic needs were going to be met... what a beautiful way to live, even with the grousing.