rethinking everything i thought i knew about ambition at 32
None of this is working. So what comes next?
When first starting my therapy journey in 2023, my therapist and I were unpacking day-to-day behaviors and thought processes that were indicative of anxiety. A simple exercise that was a means of finding small, impactful ways to address the persistent “treading water, moments from drowning” feeling that had been overwhelming me for several years. Something that came up in the discussion was this feeling of “chasing”. That all of my life, as far back as memory could take me, there had always been something that I was doggedly pursuing.
Schooling and casual extracurriculars, in adolescence, became a pursuit of perfection and “busyness”. Earning one degree turned into multiple, turned into law school, turned into a seeking out a more prestigious corporate career, turned into climbing the ladder while juggling side hustles…
You get the idea.
When my therapist astutely identified this pattern as the likely culprit of my burnout and acknowledged that relentlessly pursuing “the next thing” was a huge anxiety indicator1, there was one question that I needed answered:
“If constantly chasing down my next goal is a form of anxiety, what separates anxiety from ambition and drive?”
I had always self-identified as someone who was driven. I made shit happen. There were very few goals that, once placed in my sights, I couldn’t reach. This was a point of personal pride. It was certainly a source of external praise. How could it also be the root of why I felt so goddamn terrible all the time?
My therapist’s answer: “Do you ever pause to take in your accomplishments? Do these goals that you chase down actually make you feel fulfilled and satisfied? Or do you check an item off the list and immediately move on?”
Son of a bitch.
Her answer spurred the first moment in my life where I actually paused and asked why I was doing any of the things I was currently doing.
Why had being in so many extracurriculars been so important to me? Because I had time and was encouraged to do it. “It looks good on your college application.”
Why complete a second degree and apply for law school? It was impressive. If I could fit it in, why not?
Why go to law school, at all? It’s what you do if you get in.
Why accept a leadership position in your company, when you enjoyed being a creative? It’s what you do. It’s what it means to be successful in your role. To be promoted.
Son of a BITCH!
All at once, my therapist had put into words a reality that hurt: I’d spent the better part of three decades deciding my next move based largely on external expectations and an approved model, without ever once pausing and asking myself what I actually wanted my life to look like. I had boiled existence down to Step One, Step Two, Step Three, and so on, without ever considering an end goal. Or what could be considered an achievement. Or, in the simplest terms, what would just make me feel happy.
Turns out: I’m not alone in that. This feeling even has a name, The Great Millennial Career Crisis2. A “collective breakdown” is what the researchers are calling it. An entire generation of young professionals reaching the end of their proverbial runway as the future that they were promised disappears from beneath them, leaving them feeling burned out, behind on life, and rewriting the script in real time.
For me, I stopped looking at ambition as any kind of accomplishment or hard-and-fast metric. Rather, I want to be able to reflect on every day and feel good about where my energy went and who ultimately benefitted from it.
promises, promises (or, this is not what any of us signed up for)
The generational discussion of work, life, and the approach to both/either is tense and defined by blame and sweeping dualities that just don’t gel. No one wants to work // Everyone is balancing a full-time job and three side hustles. Young people expect too much in the way of benefits and compensation // The world is too expensive and the system too broken for even the well off to get comfortable. It’s wild that the foundation of this wider cultural discussion is so cracked because, at the end of the day, we all want the same thing.
Since mankind first crawled out of the primordial bog and began to make its way in the world, every single one of us has wanted the same thing: A reasonable certainty that today and the day after would be safe for us, safe for our loved ones.
That is gone.
In 2026 alone, the tech sector3 (often lauded as the creme de la creme of employee prosperity and satisfaction) has cut 153,000 jobs; at a time where technological development and necessity is at an all-time high and growing. That’s 153,000 of some of the top earning, most educated, and most productive individuals in the country that are now back in a job market where long-term unemployment4 (that’s folks who have been searching for six months or longer).
What the hell happened? Pointedly, what the hell happened to the guarantee of the college degree. Of the sensible corporate job. Of company loyalty and the social contract that if you took care of your boss, your boss would take care of you.
What precisely happened is work for the historians and economists. What happened to me was I found myself one day, dusting myself off after being laid off by a company I had worked with for six years and done well within, and realizing that what I had thought was satisfying and safe was actually a rotting infrastructure that had been holding up my own disintegrating husk for the better part of that time.
Graphic, right?
But it’s how it felt.
For six years, I had self-identified as ambitious, competent, and a hard worker. I said ‘yes’ to higher workloads, increased responsibility, and promotions. What I hadn’t known was that I was the frog in the proverbial boiling pot. It wasn’t until I was cut loose that I could appreciate how much I had been hollowed out.
The passion projects and hobbies that had been set aside. The hours of the day spent stressing over self-imposed deadlines and office politics. Giving my creativity and energy to anyone other than myself, my loved ones, and the things that really moved me.
return on investment versus returning to identity
There’s no real way to end this essay, because there’s no real end to this discovery.
It’s an evolving thing. It’s a daily check-in. It’s the knowledge that ambition, and my relationship to being ambitious, is somewhere in equal parts of de-centering goals from my core identity and making my life and identity the ultimate work-in-progress.
Here’s how it’s going, so far:
We’re all multihyphenate.
My tombstone will not reference anything that is also found on my LinkedIn.
A career is not a life, even if it is a passion. A job is not the cornerstone of who you are, it’s the thing that props up everything else.
You are your most valuable asset. Your health, your energy, your perspective, your brief blip of time spent on this earth — that’s where you place your heavy investment.
Ambition is not a line on a shareholder graph that must forever trend up, up, up. It dips. It plateaus. It shifts. It trades. It pauses.
‘A Wild Muse’ is written and edited by Cait Kennedy, who has never claimed to be an expert on anything. Opinions, biases, and perspectives are entirely her own, subject to changing on a whim, and unburdened by editorial standards of any kind.
You can follow Cait on Instagram: @thecaitkennedy
I also cover film. Check out my film, television, and entertainment newsletter, Simply Cinema.
Johnson, Sheri L., Benjamin A. Swerdlow, Michael Treadway, Jordan A. Tharp, and Charles S. Carver. “Willingness to Expend Effort Toward Reward and Extreme Ambitions in Bipolar I Disorder.” Clinical Psychological Science 5, no. 6 (August 11, 2017): 943–51.
Towns, Alyssa. “It’s Official: We’ve Entered the Great Millennial Career Crisis.” The Everygirl, 9 Mar. 2026, https://theeverygirl.com/great-millennial-career-crisis/.
Andrew Bosworth. “Meta’s CTO Says Morale Is Almost ‘the Worst It’s Ever Been’.” Business Insider, 17 June 2026, Business Insider article
Liu, Jennifer. “Long-Term Unemployment Is Becoming ‘a Status Quo’ in Today’s Job Market: It’s a ‘Mental War,’ Job Seeker Says.” CNBC, 16 Feb. 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/16/long-term-unemployment-becoming-a-status-quo-in-todays-job-market.html.