Soft Ambition
...or how I realized that slowing down doesn’t mean wanting less.
There are two versions of me that exist at all times: the one who wants a soft, slow life and the one who is utterly incapable of sitting still. They share a body, a brain, and an impressive amount of Diet Coke, but they have wildly different ideas about what a productive day looks like.
The world loves a binary. You can be driven, or you can be present. Hustle, or embrace stillness. Chase success, or enjoy your life. Choose wisely.
Or, hear me out—don’t choose at all.
For fifteen years, I treated ambition like a promotion was just around the corner—relentless hours, questionable benefits, and the vague promise that eventually, it would all pay off. I worked, I hustled, I collected panic attacks like frequent flyer miles, convinced that if I just kept moving, I’d finally arrive at some destination where balance was waiting with a welcome drink.
I believed ambition had to be loud. That it required sacrificing sleep, peace, and any semblance of work-life balance. That if I wasn’t relentlessly proving myself, I wasn’t really doing anything at all. And then, I burned out so many times that even my burnout started burning out. I was running on fumes, and then the fumes staged an intervention.
Which is how I found myself here, actively pursuing the impossible: a soft, quiet, ambitious life.
Mornings are slow. They have to be. Not because I am a wellness influencer with a five-step journaling ritual, but because I have the circadian rhythm of a person whose body clock and actual clock have never once agreed on anything. There’s no morning rush. No immediately checking emails. No diving into work before I remember that I am an actual person with needs. Instead, there’s my dog, who gets the first part of my day. There is a walk involved—quiet, still, occasionally interrupted by my dog’s deep need to investigate a single leaf for an unsettling amount of time—before the notifications start. There’s caffeine in some form—whatever requires the least effort to acquire. And no matter how urgent everything feels, the world will still be there when I get to it.
It’s a delicate balance, making space for the kind of stillness that keeps you sane without falling into full inertia. I have been guilty of both. Of doing too much, and of doing absolutely nothing. Of measuring my worth by productivity, then swinging too far the other way, convincing myself that watching six hours of prestige reality television was the same as self-care. (It wasn’t, but I did develop a concerning level of emotional attachment to people I will never meet.)
I’ve learned to say no. Not in the chic, boundary-setting way people write about online, but in the way that makes me physically unwell for several hours afterward. Because when you’re used to being the person who always says yes—who is agreeable and available and easy—you have to teach yourself to be otherwise. It’s not comfortable, but it is necessary. And much like wearing white while eating pasta, it never gets easier, but I’ve accepted it as part of life.
And then, there are the people.
If a quiet life is to mean anything, you have to protect it. Not everyone gets access to your time, your energy, your peace. There are people I’ve loved who I don’ t see anymore. Not because they were terrible, but because I was terrible with them. Some friendships feel like home. Others feel like a group project where you did all the work, and somehow, they still got an A.
I still work, obviously. And when I do, it’s not soft or slow or calm. It’s obsessive. It’s me at my desk, muttering to myself, writing and rewriting the same sentence until I start questioning whether words have ever had meaning. It’s being up until 2 a.m. on a project that no one asked me to make perfect, but that I’ll make perfect anyway. Because there’s a difference between work and work that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go.
So no, I am not rejecting ambition. I am just rejecting the version of it that says you have to give up everything else in its pursuit. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that doing all the right things guarantees absolutely nothing, and the things that actually change your life tend to blindside you on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday.
I was 22 when I first tried to break into the film industry. I sent hundreds of emails to production companies. Not one of them responded. My big break didn’t come from networking or LinkedIn or a strategically placed hustle. It came because a production coordinator walked into my dad’s restaurant, struck up a conversation, and three months later, I got a call asking if I wanted to be a cast assistant on a movie. My life trajectory changed overnight.
This is the part no one wants to talk about. That luck plays a role. That you can do all the right things, hustle your way into exhaustion, and still—still—find that the thing that moves your life forward is something as ridiculous as someone ordering a sandwich in the right place at the right time.
Of course, luck only works if you’re ready for it. And it has an uncanny ability to show up precisely when you’ve decided you don’t care anymore. It never arrives when you’re prepared, wearing a perfectly curated outfit and holding a color-coded planner. No, it shows up when you're wearing questionable sweatpants, carrying a receipt for something you don’t remember buying, and contemplating whether you have the energy to make dinner or if you’ll simply exist near food and hope for the best.
So I work. I write. I take my ambition seriously. But I also make space for nothing. I let my brain do what it needs to do: rest, wander, stop trying so hard. I’ve learned that some of my best ideas come when I’m not working. That the right sentence usually arrives when I stop looking for it. That forcing something to happen never makes it happen any faster. (See also: dating, long lines at the grocery store, and waiting for a text back.)
I don’t wake up to notifications anymore. My phone is silent most of the day. I mute everything that’s not urgent, and—spoiler—almost nothing is urgent. I’ve removed the clutter from my home screen, the mental noise from my mornings, the chaos from my schedule. I set the lighting in my apartment because ambiance is everything, and overhead lighting is a personal attack.
I schedule my life in a way that makes sense for me. Not for anyone else. Not for some idealized version of myself that doesn’t exist. I know when I work best. I know when I need to disappear. And I know how much social energy I actually have before I want to go home and sit in silence with my dog. (Usually two hours, three if I’m in the right mood, and four if someone has bribed me with food.)
I used to think I had to do everything all at once, and if I couldn’t, then I was failing. That I had to meet every deadline, every expectation, every invisible rule I had set for myself—like an unpaid intern in my own life.
But I don’t run on anyone else’s timeline anymore.
The world tells you to be one thing or the other. Relentless or restful. Driven or detached.
But life doesn’t exist in binaries. It exists in the in-between.
I still want more. I still chase big, ridiculous, all-consuming dreams. I’m living a lot of them right now. But I also leave emails unanswered longer than I once would have tolerated. I take naps in the middle of the day. And I go for long walks where I let myself think about nothing at all.
And somehow, everything still gets done. Which is both reassuring and vaguely insulting.
I used to think I had to earn the right to slow down. That once I’d made it, then I’d be allowed to enjoy my life. But there is no finish line.
There is just your life.
And if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that life is what you make it. Did you hear that? You can make it whatever you want. You can chase ambition without chasing burnout. You can take yourself seriously without taking everything seriously. You can want more without running yourself into the ground to get it. The world will try to tell you otherwise, but the world has been wrong before. You get to build a life that fits.
And you get to decide what pace you run it at.
File Under: ‘Trying to Have It All, but Also Lying Down.’
—The Ash Files—Where life’s unexpected moments get filed away—sometimes neatly, sometimes under “figure it out later.” From writer/creator ASH, expect weekly musings, honest stories, and a reminder that no one has life entirely figured out [least of all me].✨
This is making me feel calm in ways I never felt. It's healing and reassuring that I may be an outcast but not wrong. And kudos to the voice actor! (I don't know if it's the author herself or not.) I am an aspiring author and poet. I want to learn so much from you. I sincerely admire your writing style and ability to portray feelings through words. Thank you, Ash. Please keep going with whatever you're doing...
Ugh, the urge to be productive to validate your own existence vs just experience life as it is, is a tough one. Specially when the world is full of overachievers and the ‘work hard and stay hungry’ discourse. I guess to follow soft ambitions is the way to keep external expectations at bay.