Unraveling my ambition: welcome to my inner turmoil, part 1
On one hand , I just want to *be*
August 2021. A house at the end of a cul-de-sac by the 101 freeway in Silver Lake. I was kneeling on my kitchen floor, hands deep in 30 kilograms of pizza dough that I was preparing for the pop-up in 30 hours, balancing my phone between my shoulder and my ear talking to a record label who was interested in releasing my latest album, hoping none of my roomates walked in to see the mess I was making or the tears streaming down my face.
Why was I crying? isn’t this what I wanted? isn’t this what people want, generally? isn’t this what people expect of me, now?
33 hours later, we baked the last of 120 pizzas after a chaotic 3 hour pop-up and someone brought us a pitcher of beer, someone else gave us a round of high-fives. I turned around and looked at my team. Sweaty, burnt, dazed. I looked at the pile of dirty containers and 3 piping hot pizza ovens we would have to pack up in someone else’s car ( the realities of being a legally blind caterer without a drivers’ licnese) that I would have to wash in my kitchen sink at the end of the night.
I took a big swig of beer. Smiled as faintly as I could as friends waved goodbye.
Why did I feel like crying?
Everything felt off, and when I woke up the morning after I knew in my gut what I had to do. Stop this, stop that, stop everything— for just a moment, I needed to think.
So I packed my pizza ovens, nestled them into a corner of my roomates’ garage, moved my personal stuff into a corner of my parents’ living room, and left for a moment. That monent ended up being 3 months in Paris, alone, aimless, clueless, lost, void of any ambition, inspiraiton, or enthusiasm. I was just exisitng, living, and observing.
***
On one hand, now I just want to BE.
I have been too mallubale, too impressionable , too easily swayed by my environment. I’ve cared too much about every project I’ve work on and every person who has shown the least bit of interest me. I’ve sent too many follow up emails and invited too many people to my parties. I wanted so badly to be a part of somehting bigger than myself that I gave eveyrhting I had to everything I did. And then I lost myself in the process.
Everyone else was gearing up to tour the country.
Everyone else was saving up to buy bigger dough mixers.
I thought I too, who so badly wanted to be a part of a community, wanted the same things.
So ever since that night on my kitchen floor, cheeks wet with tears, hands wet with dough, floor drenched in flour, I having been staying away from ambition. I have been making myself smaller, quieter, more anonymous, so that hopefully I can hear myself again.
My gut was telling me: want the opposite of what you wanted before. You don’t need to want all the things everyone else does.
Want less. Want more space. Want more time.
***
Ever since I lived in the south of Italy in the winter of 2017, when things got a little stress-y in LA I would often think about this small family owned cheese shop on the main street of the town I was in. The shop, handed down from the generation to generation, was not trying to be anything more than it was, or do anything more than it was doing— feed the city cheese. I would often daydream about a life where I would be living in this small city in Apullia, working at that cheese shop, content with having just enough. No need for more.
But of course, that was all but a daydream! Like a slap in the face from the universe, I ended up meeting with the actual son of the cheesemaker to hear his story a few months ago. Over ample amounts of cheese and natural wines, he told me about his travels around the world, his desire a different life than the one he was being asked to live, and how he broke through to find a middle ground to satisfy his creativity while also trying to uphold the cards he’d been dealt. The result was a cheese bar in the woods near his hometown.
Speaking to him was one of the first idea-shattering moemnts I’ve had the past few months. His creativirty pushed him forward not out of a desire to be anything more, but simply because it needed to get out.
***
On one hand, I’m still tired and just want to BE. Floating in Paris, working little, making little, drinking cheap wine and listening to jazz. No goals, just vibes, as the columnist from the Cut wrote in her piece “Losing My Ambition” that
mentions in her latest newsletter on the same topic.On one hand I wonder if I’ve just become a totally different person now. Too much has changed since Covid, and maybe there’s no going back to who I was before. That girl? She was an over-zealous twenty-something who put too much stock in the work on her plate.
But on the other hand——————————————————————
I can’t wait for part 2 ❤️