Liz’s Ambition – If Only

Listen to this post:

Ambition: ‘desire and determination to achieve success.‘

https://languages.oup.com

I’m the least ambitious person there is. My main motivation to go to university in the early 2000s was to have a career to fall back on in case I got a divorce. No, I wasn’t married at that time. I wasn’t even in a steady relationship, yet that was my goal. I never did get any degree at university, partly because I focused on my retail job. Mind you, the retail job that was never going to lead anywhere and which I didn’t even like that much. I did manage to get out of retail and am now a writer, though not a very successful one. Why is this? Is it pure laziness? Or is there more going on? Will I ever get out of this rut and achieve success?

Hard Working

First of all: I’m not lazy. I love working. During the years I worked in retail, I worked hard. I even secured more pay because I was working so hard in comparison to my colleagues. It’s working for myself, I find difficult. I’m not striving to be the best writer out there. It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize people do enjoy my writing, even the fiction stories I used to write for myself for fun. I know I write with a particular style and on subjects that are not for everyone. And yet, there’s an audience for my stories too. I still have trouble believing it.

Write Similar Stories

So expand on it. Write more. When I tried to sell my chastity belt story, several websites I offered it to were interested. In the end, I sold it to Readaurore.com. My husband was like: cool, write more of it. But I didn’t. Yes, part of it is laziness. And I don’t need the money. And the biggest lie writers tell themselves: lack of inspiration.
The same goes for the stories I self-published. If I had continued to self-publish and had written more stories on the topics that sold well, I would have been making a pretty sum by now. But I didn’t.

Freelance Work

Working for yourself, by yourself, is hard. The thought that my husband could lose his job scares me immensely. His career is secure, but you never know. In the current situation, this would mean I’d return to retail if they would have me, or I would try to find a customer service job. Both sound pretty nightmarish to me, especially now I know I can write and there is an audience for my writing.

Focus

I don’t know how to turn things around. I know I should write more fiction stories, so I bring in more money, either on Medium or self-published. I think it boils down to this: focus. I should focus on one line of work. This is also why my review work isn’t amounting to anything. I write my reviews, they attract some attention, but I never go that step further to really set off the business. It leaves me in a state of constant frustration. If only I did more with my reviews. If only I wrote more stories. If only I wrote more blog posts and shared them elsewhere. If only.

Potential

The lack of ambition weighs heavily on my shoulders. Because deep down, I know I can do better. But doing better requires determination and hard work. And even though I work a lot, I never go to the place that would make my business shine. It’s never enough. If only I aspired to be the best. If only I were more ambitious. Instead, I’m just plodding along, doing bits and pieces here and there. And it’s never enough. If only…

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