Seattle, May 2016 As he put a few remaining things into his backpack and took care of a couple last minute tasks, like vacuuming his room and boxing up his computer, it took everything I had to keep from crying. Trying not to cry takes enormous effort. It’s like wrestling a bear or beating back a wildfire. My chest constricted. It was hard to breathe. A swell of sadness rolled through my body, too strong to contain or manage. But I…
I’m losing my ambition. This is probably something that a person shouldn’t admit, especially out loud on a blog post. In our culture, we place a high value on ambition, even celebrate it. Ambition is equated with forward motion, something fresh-scrubbed and enthusiastic. “Lack of ambition,” on the other hand, conjures up the image of a bleary-eyed, vapid stoner wasting his/her days away, playing X-Box in some dim living room. The unambitious are typically presumed to be slackers. Losers even. But is that really…
