Frustrated Ambition

from Morgan Harper Nichols

I feel so stuck.

Stuck and unmotivated even. It feels like a year into a pandemic is finally catching up with me mentally.

I haven’t had a job interview since last March, the week everything shut down and I can’t stop thinking about one topic and that was ambition. “I want ambitious people.” That was the last thing that was discussed in that interview and it kind of threw me off. I never feel the most confident in job interviews, I always feel like my brain just stops functioning and I don’t remember any ideas I had for the position or even how my experience can be an asset. I think it’s the whole talking thing, I’m a writer, it’s much easier for me to collect and express my thoughts if I’m writing them. Anyway, ambition. He asked me what my ambitions were, beyond this job. How this job can accelerate my future goals. It followed a conversation where he had asked why I did freelance work, the way it came across was like freelance work wasn’t actual work. But it also felt like he didn’t think I had ambitions.

Well, I tend to think everyone has ambitions. But I know I fumbled on the question and it’s driving me crazy, even a year later. Honestly, my anxiety tells me half my ambitions are just kinda throw-aways like “Yeah it’s nice to dream but that’s probably not gonna happen” kind of thing. But then there’s also the fact that I’ve been job hunting for two years. One of those years completely ruined by a pandemic in which, because I’m considered high risk, I didn’t want to physically work in a building, and then just a lot of businesses not hiring/layoffs. I think it’s hard to think of goals for five years from now, where I want to be then. Because how can I think of that when I can’t even get beyond step one of finally getting a job? How am I supposed to think of an ultimate goal, my highly ambitious goal, when right now it feels ambitious just to keep applying for jobs I’m never gonna hear from.

How am I supposed to say with a straight face that I’d love to be head of communications for a professional sports team when I can’t even manage to find the door to get my foot in?

Maybe it’s the combination of self-doubt and uncertainty wrapped up in global pandemic emotions rolled in frustration. 

I just want a job. Preferably one I’d like, one I know I could be good at. But it feels like that doesn’t exist? And the idea of settling is extremely frustrating and discouraging. After working so hard for a degree, it feels like a waste to not get a job that’s at least related to it. This has more or less turned into a stream of consciousness as my posts often do so I’m not too sure how to end this. I’m just hoping that by getting this out of my head and onto a post, it’s something I no longer give energy too or dwell on and at the very least is relatable to others.