Where has my ambition gone?

I don’t particularly enjoy talking about my work with other people – three of my best friends are also authors and I barely discuss my current projects with them, let alone anyone outside of publishing. I always say that I have a finite amount of interest and energy for a book, and I’d rather use that actually writing rather than talking about it. There’s also a tendency to switch into interview mode when I’m discussing my “process” (shudder), almost disassociating as the answers fall from my mouth, fluid and easy. For that reason, I try to avoid mentioning what I do on dates (although, somewhat hilariously, American men have been mostly disinterested in the fact I’m a writer. I’m sorry I don’t work in finance, Brad!!!) But I did get into an interesting conversation with someone this week. He was also an artist, so we talked about art and legacy and impact, and then the subject of Faust came up. I have long been fascinated with the idea of selling your soul to the devil in exchange for some material desire – fame, wealth, power – and I asked him what it would take for him to enter into such a Faustian pact. If you could be guaranteed that your work would change your industry, that it would be lauded and celebrated and studied for generations, what would you do in return? Would you agree to die in ten years, I asked him, if you were promised a decade of extraordinary artistic achievement instead?

He hesitated and then said he’d probably agree. Wouldn’t most artists? he said. Isn’t that part of why we do this? And I looked at him and I thought – no. No.

I would have given a different answer just a handful of years ago. The pursuit of greatness, of success, was such a driving force in my life, I would have happily taken that deal in order to achieve immortality. To be remembered forever, what more could one want? I had this almost relentless drive, a small voice inside my head telling me to work harder, to keep going, to march onwards and onwards and onwards, yelling at me that I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t stop until I had reached an intangible goal. I didn’t know what that was yet, but I was sure I would feel satisfied once I got there. The most important thing in my life was my career, my writing; everything else could be sacrificed on the altar of my success and I would be happy to do so.

I don’t feel like that anymore. I don’t know if it was the pandemic, the inevitable re-evaluation of our lives that happened when we finally had a second to catch our breath. Or maybe it was everything that happened to me last year – a life falling apart, and the chance to rebuild something new from the rubble, something better, something true.  When I took last year off work, I was struggling with