could've been me (bygone opportunities' siren call)

Today's post is inspired by a fifteen-year-old Facebook memory full of earnest and optimistic hubris. I won't share it here because the specifics aren't important, but the gist of it had to do with drafting a paper for one of my mentors. It may also bear mentioning that I'm reluctant to engage with Meta at all. Anyway, it got me thinking about how my daily life looks nothing like what I thought it would, but that's actually a blessing.

If you'd asked me fifteen years ago, I would have had the most painstakingly clear and vocal vision of my professional life. I knew I wanted a PhD, and I knew I wanted to be either an archivist or a preservationist. Teaching factored into it, too, and I always thought I would be doing a lot of that; I was never the sort of aspiring academic who looked down their nose at teaching. I thought I'd be doing it, and publishing, and maybe winning awards here and there for some project or other.

Really, the thing I miss least is a focus on achievements. I have oodles of intrinsic motivation when I care about things, but I know a hamster-wheel state wouldn't have suited me because I can get pretty carried away with work.

These fifteen years have been winding and fickle, folks. Brutal, really.

I was on track for doing what I set out to do, then I was... not. I'm nowhere in the academy or close to academy-adjacent. (I should stress that I'm happy. But scarce amounts of what I'm up to these days echo what I said I wanted to be up to.) There was a time when I had to unsubscribe from my most beloved cultural institutions' email lists because every time something was sent out about a postdoc, or an award, or a lauded guest lecturer, I got an ache in my chest. I thought I'd disappointed every mentor I'd ever had who praised my contributions and potential.

That could've been me, I thought, every time one of those emails came across my path.

Not really the same thing as, that should have been me.

I genuinely don't begrudge the overwhelming majority of people their accomplishments. But oh, the damn could've. I really could have been that person whose monograph won an award. I could have been that new postdoc.

Not arrogance, just truth. I was primed and ready. A lot of things could have been, but they aren't. Stuff happened. It changed my array of coulds.

It's taken ages, and deep therapy, but I'm finally in a mental space where the could've doesn't cause a physical chest-to-stomach ache. I'm free of it, and it's so nice.

I can say from experience that if you have any of these could'ves floating around, please make the effort to turn down their call. Not to the point where you have no desires, but rather, just so that you can figure out what those desires actually are. A measure of wanting things is good; I actually know what I want again. It's not an expired version.

Could've warps your perceptions. It may leave you beholden to someone who doesn't even exist, leaving you unable to embrace any goodness that's happening to someone who does. To be so blunt, getting most or even half of what I thought I wanted would have decimated me and burnt me out. Perhaps not at first... but in the long run, I believe it would have, given my temperament, capacity, and values.

I'm not saying all this is an easy thing to shed; it is not. It takes practice and grace and curiosity and a fuck of a lot of crying. There are still things I can't contemplate doing and spaces I can't see myself entering, sheerly because I still feel like I've failed in my attempts to do or be part of them. I get kind of panicky when I'm asked to do a panel (academic or not), for example, and it's not how I really feel. It's trauma being poked at, aggressively, which results in imposter syndrome.

Unfortunately, there will always be stanch traditionalists who are of the opinion that I'm not much of anything no matter what qualifications I got, because I'm... gasp... unaffiliated. They're not the reason for my panicky response or imposter syndrome; they actually help, because I find spite and dismissal kind of motivating? Hell yeah, I'm outside of your systems.

But I'm much happier as I am now than I was fifteen years ago. I'm certainly more interesting, too.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what my point is here, or what it has to do with my writing now, but if anyone finds this helpful... I suppose that's the point. It's more than okay to take the scenic route to whatever it is that brings you solace or joy or purpose, and not enough of us say so.

All the love x