I am fast approaching a milestone here on ye’ olde blog. One thousand posts. Yet I have also kept my foot firmly planted against the door keeping the crack from opening anymore. I have controlled and avoided my success so perfectly that I’m feeling the yawning pains of stagnation here.
How do you avoid success you ask?
- Well you never self-promote. You work just as hard but never ask people for anything. Not their eyes to read or their support. You keep everything on the down low QT.
- You don’t go outside of your bubble and send your work or thoughts to other people.
- You avoid growth and creating anything that could cause more work for yourself soon.
Successful avoidance of success is based solely on the concept that if I did become more successful than that would mean that I may have to pay a high price in effort. I know that presently I can get everything I need done, I can write, and keep up the care of my children. If I started creating more work for myself, then I would be creating my demands when I already feel I have too much.
Of course, success is probably like having your first baby. You think it’ll be tough and it is but you love it. And everything you need just magically appears when you need it. I know all about stalling the children thing and how it is what it is until it isn’t anymore and you won’t die. Well so far it hasn’t killed me.
And lastly, I think I don’t have a good healthy relationship with the word success. I think of it as something you strive for that you ignore other people to get. You work too hard and your children suffer and it’s all about yourself and the needs you have to be acknowledged all the time. I think it’s about greed and money made and attention seeking. About status and ego needs being met. And I’ve convinced myself that I don’t need any of that thank you.
Yet there’s a tiny part of me that says that success isn’t the reward. That there are all sorts of perks and ahas that pave the way and that by the time you get there, you have figured all this out. But you must be in process to discover these eurekas. So, I just want to have some fun and see what happens.
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4 Comments
Reading this reminded me of a time when I was dating yet another alcoholic (because I felt comfortable with drunks, knowing them so well, often enjoying their neediness, and anyway I was only good enough for men with addiction problems)… so, I was out at a bar with one of these fellows when I ran into a colleague, who knew me quite well and cared for me. He was himself quite drunk at the time, which loosened his tongue, and he asked me loudly in front of my date, “Are you afraid of successful men?” It was a staggering moment. I realized I was. Over the years since then, I have become less so. Sometimes one good question from a friend can change so much. Thank you for helping me look at avoidance of success again here.
I’m always stunned at how one person’s story is similar to another’s. As for successful men, that whole paragraph on what I perceive the bad parts of success are is all about my Dad. He was and made it look painful. My husband and I came from similar drunken Dad backgrounds so we are slowly creating our own definition of success. Funny because I see you as all kinds of busy. But maybe, like me, you are busy in busy kinda ways. Thanks for your thoughts because they too make a difference to me.
Love,
Shalagh
I am always busy, yes… but that does not mean that every day feels like a success. Fathers… my own was the reason I love drunks. :>)
Even successful people can feel like failures. And of course we knew what our commonalities probably were.