Jayne asked on facebook, “what are your dreams and ambitions?”

I could talk to you for hours about this because the journey towards developing and framing one has been a long and winding road with many false starts and missteps

I can sort of reverse engineer them from my childhood ambitions- to be an astronaut, scientist, video game designer, website maker, lawyer, journalist, blogger, novelist

If you zoom out from the functional fixedness of the roles: I want to explore, to learn, to create meaningful experiences, to argue for what is fair, and to play with words

In practical terms, the main thing is just to sustain an uncommonly intense writing practice, which I have been doing. I have some “would be nice” plans like writing X number of short stories, novels, get featured here, meet that person”, etc, but I’m not too attached to any of those things. The main thing is to just write intensely every day until I die, and to have tolerable quality of life in the interim. Everything else is quite negotiable

Jayne: That’s just it I guess, that strange balance of the “nice to haves” and the things you know you need to fulfill / accomplish. In your case i guess it’s to become the best writer you could be, and you truly believe that by questioning and doing intensely, that you’ll get there?

Yep. I’ve made enough progress so far and received enough feedback to know that I’m on the right track. Everything else is just refinement, doubling down on what works, throwing out what doesn’t, sticking to it, etc.

This is the important part though:

I didn’t always have such clarity that I wanted to be a writer in the purposeful, active, proactive sense.

I wouldn’t have dared to dream that as a kid, because I had (and still have) uncommonly high standards when it comes to writing. Writing was always close to me, something I always turned to, but I didn’t dare make it “my thing” until maybe my NS years– and even then it was more like, “let’s take this hobby more seriously” rather than a devoted vocation.

So I just kept it on the backburner while trying out all sorts of other things.

I got some criticisms of some of my early writing, but it just made me think “They don’t understand what I’m trying to say, I need to work harder and be clearer” rather than “This isn’t for me.”

(And I’m not one of those people who work crazy-hard at everything. I have said ‘”this isn’t for me” for many things.)

Only after I started getting positive responses and feedback did I dare to believe that yes, I’ve got a serious shot at being an uncommonly good writer.

TLDR– You’re absolutely right, though I feel it’s important that to emphasize that the “truly believe” bit was neither inborn nor a bolt out of the blue. It was something that developed over time, experience, feedback.

Jayne: That’s nice to hear; it’s very real, this responding to feedback thing. Some people have that unwavering belief in themselves in exactly what they want to achieve, no matter if it’s not in sight. But maybe for people like you and i, we have hopes and aspirations to be the best possible versions of ourselves, we just don’t know what that exactly is till we get more experience and criticism over time. There is much hope for us

I have my serious doubts about the “unwavering belief” people. I think there’s a lot of selection bias and survivorship bias, and myth building. Memories are reconstructed every time we remember them. So if we get successful at something, it’s then very easy to connect the dots backwards and assume that we were ambitious all along, destined, etc etc. It gets messy. It’s very easy to say that I always wanted to be a writer. But I always wanted to be an astronaut, too. So I think the “unwavering belief” thing is very misleading. It’s more about feedback loops, really.

So actually… I prefer not to ask people about their ambitions. Ambition is a heavy word, and it can get a bit performative.

I prefer to ask about taste. What are you very exacting about? (You: food, me: words.) The more anal you are about something, the better a shot you have at being world-class at it, because you’ll obsess over it longer than anybody else, and you’ll dream about it, think about it in the shower, and so on.

The scary thing, though, is that because you have such high standards, you’re hyper-conscious of your own failure and incompetence. Ira Glass talked about this quite beautifully.

Oh, and to address the part about “certainly those aren’t dreams and ambitions” – I think you’re either being unfair to yourself or you’re playing with hand-me-down ideas that aren’t very helpful. “Dreams And Ambitions (TM)” are a construct, and you don’t necessarily need to have some nice stock answer to trot around like a resume.

Besides writing, I have some very mundane and/or boring things that matter to me. I’d like to fix my shitty relationship with food. I’d like to learn to live in the moment, peaceful and still. I’d like to learn to swim, I’d like to enjoy a long drive on an open road. I’d like to grow old and host dinner parties with lots of thoughtful, compassionate friends. I’d like to resolve all my childhood guilt and neuroses, and when I’m old be able to say, I helped and served more than I hurt and offended.

And I’d like to laugh a lot. Many, many laughs. And orgasms. Amen.