by Jamie McNeill

Let’s begin with a very normal Tuesday: I once cried in my car because I couldn’t figure out how to make a career out of being extremely good at sensing when someone needs a snack, a nap, or to dump their boyfriend. Turns out, late stage capitalism doesn't reward emotional clairvoyance.

We grow up marinating in motivational slogans: Follow your passion! Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life! Which is adorable, and also a complete lie. Because even when you love what you do, it is still very much work. You sweat. You spiral. You consider selling feet pics. You wonder if you were meant to be a barefoot poet in a Mediterranean village but got dropped into the wrong timeline and now you’re negotiating payment plans and Googling “how long can someone live off of coffee and a dream?”

Loving what you do is the easy part. It’s showing up for what you love over and over again that’s hard.

Ambition, it turns out, isn’t always shiny. It doesn’t always come with vision boards and five year plans. Sometimes it shows up wearing leggings from 2016, eating hummus over the sink at 10 p.m. while muttering on repeat, “I’m doing great,” through tears.

Sometimes ambition looks like telling yourself, “I can do hard things,” right after you double book your Thursday and forget to send the invoice that pays your rent. Sometimes it just looks like surviving. Ambition is a shapeshifter.

As a cosmetologist, I live in the middle of other people’s stories. I hold space for them in my chair through breakups, job losses, grief, reinvention, divorce, and celebrations. I’ve watched women rebuild themselves repeatedly, while I trim away what no longer serves them. I cheer for them, and I try to offer myself that same tenderness. I’m usually navigating my own plot twists, scissors in hand, wondering if anyone else feels this disoriented by merely being alive.

Then there’s money. Oh, the dance we do with money! There’s this myth that financial wellness looks like color coded spreadsheets and something called “passive income.” But for most of us, success is simply not crying when we open our banking app. It’s saying yes to dinner without mentally calculating whether we can afford the appetizer. It’s buying the name brand granola without guilt. It’s having just enough to say no to the wrong things and yes to what actually matters.

We’ve been tricked into believing ambition has a singular look: a blazer, a LinkedIn banner, a caption that includes “#BossBabe.” But for many women, especially those who build with their hands, hearts, or art, ambition looks like resilience. Like getting up after another “no”. Like choosing a calling over a title. Like being brave enough to keep going when nothing makes sense, your back hurts, and your houseplants are silently judging you.

Sometimes I think life is one big experiment in learning to keep going while everything around you is falling apart and sort of beautiful. It’s realizing you're the project manager of your own chaos, the CFO of your bank account’s emotional rollercoaster, and the unofficial and unpaid therapist for all of your friends.

There’s a daily whiplash between “I am a radiant divine being” and “I might disappear into the woods and live off trail mix and spite”. It’s believing in your sacred calling yet wondering if you left your curling iron on, or if you accidentally forgot how to be a person again.

I used to think I would at some point be at a version of life that felt sorted. A place with zero anxiety, flawless routines, steady income, and a sock drawer that sparked joy. But now I know life is not a destination. It’s a dance. A messy, glorious, often hilarious dance full of missed calls, awkward texts, surprise breakthroughs and just enough beauty to keep going.

So yes, life is ridiculous. And wonderful. And wildly absurd. And still, here we are: showing up, creating and laughing at the paradox. Because ambition doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it shows up in the softness, in rest and in community. Sometimes it’s just getting through the day and calling that a win.

If anyone asks you what your goals are, feel free to say: “To stay rooted. To keep laughing. To trust my path, and to make just enough money to not worry about the price of an avocado.” Because that too is success!