For a long time, I thought there was a correct way to succeed, like there was a map everyone else had been given and I just needed to follow it properly. Especially if you wanted to be taken seriously. You learned the posture, the tone, the rules of the road, and you stuck to them, even when they didn’t quite fit.
Everything after that became part of the journey I didn’t realize I was on.
I edited myself in small ways that felt harmless at the time. I bit my tongue. I skipped jokes. I kept things tight and controlled because I thought that was what credibility looked like all while still grappling with a plethora of personal problems that were more harmful than I thought. This version of me, cultivated before my frontal lobe even developed, set me up for failure, and even life-altering experiences that could have been avoided. And maybe in some rooms it was what was needed but it also meant people only ever met the most compressed and filtered version of me.
When that version of the path cracked, it didn’t just mess with my plans, it messed with my identity. If the rules I’d been following weren’t solid, then what else had I built around them?
That part was unsettling. I won’t pretend otherwise. However, once the panic settled, something else crept in. I felt almost relieved. There was this weird sense of freedom I didn’t know I’d been missing.
Lately people keep telling me they didn’t know I was funny, or capable of not taking myself so seriously. I always find that interesting, because the truth is that I’ve always been like this. I just didn’t think she belonged in the version of success I was chasing.
Turns out, she does.
This phase feels less like reinvention and more like being handed back my own character sheet and realizing I’m allowed to respec. Like in Percy Jackson when you find out you’re not just some random kid struggling to survive the world, but actually a demigod with a completely different origin story than you were led to believe. Same person with a new context. Suddenly the traits you thought were flaws start to make a lot more sense to you.
Or maybe it’s more Harry Potter. Living under the stairs, convinced you’re ordinary, only to find out the rules were wrong and the world is much bigger than you were told and that you play a much bigger part in it than you were led to believe.
I don’t have a neat conclusion yet. I’m still figuring out what parts of me want more room now that I’ve stopped policing myself so hard. I’m learning that seriousness isn’t the same thing as depth, and that joy doesn’t cancel out ambition. If anything, it fuels it.
So yes, I’m finding myself in the chaos. Laughing more. Taking fewer things personally. Letting myself be curious, a little ridiculous, and a lot more honest than before.
If I have to rebuild myself from pieces, I’m doing it like a nerd with too much time on her hands. Carefully, experimentally and most importantly, with joy.
