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. Anyway, it got me thinking about how my daily life looks nothing like what I thought it would, but that's actually okay.

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. Really, the thing I miss least is a focus on achievements. I have oodles of intrinsic motivation when I care about things, but a hamster-wheel state wouldn't have suited me.

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 should stress that I'm happy.) 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'd praised my contributions and potential. Like I'd let them down?

That could've been me, I thought, when 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 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 your 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 anymore, leaving you unable to embrace any goodness that's happening to someone who does.

I'm not saying all this is an easy thing to shed; it is not. It takes practice and grace and curiosity. There are still things I can't contemplate doing sheerly because I still feel like I've failed in my attempts to do or be part of them. I can get kind of panicky when I'm asked to do a panel, for example, and it's not how I really feel. I was just forced to pivot when I wasn't ready to, and lost a lot of what I'd built in the process, so it kinda feels like I failed even though I didn't. That it must have been my fault, even though it was politics and votes. Things way out of my control.

But I'm much happier now than I was fifteen years ago. I'm more interesting, too. (Maybe.)

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 okay to take the scenic route to whatever brings you solace or joy or purpose, and not enough of us say so.

All the love x