The panic of being super ambitious

I want to be a writer. I want to write books. I want to write articles. I want to write a column. I want to write for television and for film. I want to possibly act in these shows and films; and maybe I’ll direct them, too.

I have a lot of big plans and aspirations—and you know what? It kills me everyday.

I can’t go one day without thinking about my future. I have little panic attacks about how I’m going to get there and then I wonder if watching a couple of hours of Gilmore Girls each night is really the way forward. It’s like I’m standing in some Wizard of Oz world at a magical crossroads with at least a thousand different paths towards my goal and I don’t know which is the best to choose. How will I ever know? I can only pick one, right? I stand there for hours debating which will take me the right way and eventually I can’t bear it anymore so I sit down and I cry about how I’ll probably never get there anyway. In the Wizard of Oz type world, a scarecrow would come out of nowhere and take me on a mystical journey to my hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately, however, no scarecrow comes to hold my hand and pull me down the right path. I’m probably going to have to do this alone.

I am so passionate about my ambitions that sometimes it hurts. I live and breathe writing. It is always at the back of my mind, always the reason for doing what I’m doing and the end goal of everything I do. I guess you could say that I’m a little driven.

There are many trials and tribulations to being such an ambitious person, that I’m sure many of us can laugh about even as we painfully recall how close to the heart they might seem. Trials such as not being able to properly articulate yourself when asked what you want to do in the future because you’re just so excited about it. Or desperately trying not to feel resentful of those with the same goals who have achieved them before you have. Or, even worse, in the same fashion you were hoping to achieve them. Or a little more seriously, when something in your Grand Plan doesn’t go as expected and you have to backtrack and start again. That can bruise you. But you have to persist.

Even if people laugh in your face or fail to understand how badly you desire what you want, keep going. Even if you’ve emailed over 10 different people in one go and not one of them replies, keep going. Even if you do something you think is spectacular and no one bats an eyelid, keep going.

No matter how scared you feel, how run down, how uninspired, how lost; if you have a passion that burns a fire big enough, it will fuel you right up until you succeed.

Take the time to notice the little things you’re achieving and understand how great it makes you feel when you’ve done them. The more you do this, the closer you are to your goal, and you probably won’t have realized the time passing. It can be agonizing to want something so badly, but it can also be pretty magnificent when you work so hard that you get it.

I know what I want and I know how much I want it, I’m just not quite sure as to how I’m going to get there. All I do know is that if I keep working for it with every fiber of my being, then whatever I achieve will make me feel good, and I’ll know that it’s the dream I’ve been waiting for. Good things happen to those who wait. And those who work hard. And work hard is what I’ll do.

Mollie Semple is a writer and a blogger at The Fully Intended. She truly believes she should have grown up in the 80s but is grateful that she wasn’t because she probably couldn’t survive without the Gilmore Girls. Someday she hopes she can create something similarly magnificent.”

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