"Pursue excellence. Ignore success."
The right combination of words can snap you out of the deepest ruts almost instantly. A light shines on the darkness you were lost in. I have these experiences frequently. I have had it with the quarter-life crisis project recently.
As you may have noticed my friends, the blog has been rather quiet lately. I have placed it deliberately on the sidelines, quietly contemplating what to do with it for some time. The quarter-life crisis project was created in the midst of freedom, uncertainty, and a search for direction. That search continues. But the exact parameters of the project, initially laid out as a predetermined year-long plan, no longer fit the circumstances I now find myself in. To carry on with it as it is would be to pursue success, stubbornly trying to prove that I can do what I set out to do, just for the sake of proving something. But who would that benefit?
To pursue excellence, on the other hand, is to admit that things have changed, and to allow the blog to change in response to that. I will be forever grateful to the original project for giving me a sense of purpose when I so needed it, for teaching me that I am capable of changing my lifestyle, for giving me the motivation to push my own limits. But yes, things have changed, and I want to stay honest on here so that we're still riding the wave together.
So many of the things I'm going through now are things that, I think, we all go through. My job has plopped me in the middle of a whirlwind of challenges that are pushing my limits every single day, both as a working girl and as a person. An endless succession of successes, failures, uncertainties, revelations, days of unstoppable confidence, and days of total insecurity. Navigating a position that demands self-direction. Craving peer support as I spend the majority of my days working in solitude, no team or coworkers in sight. Grappling with a work-life balance (or lack thereof...). Trying to establish my profession in a field that has zero awareness of it, and trying to solidify my own place in that field in the process. Trying to make sure the work that I'm doing has real-world value. And all the while, trying to keep my life values, goals and priorities in view. Whew. It's exciting, and terrifying, and awesome, and overwhelming, and crazy in both good and bad ways. Some days I love it, and some days I want to relinquish all control to some higher power who will just darn well tell me what to do and when to do it. Some days I can see the millions of small life lessons that are always there as clear as day... and some days I can't find them for the life of me.
But I'm pretty sure they apply to us all, or most of us, anyway. So let's look together, yeah?
xo Janine
