Don’t Just Equate Success With Your Professional Life
“Will you write about this?” she asked. I wondered was this success - taking requests in the corridor between the assembly hall and the canteen. Our teenagers sit beside each other in class. She was finding the parent-teacher interviews noisy and chaotic. I was quite enjoying myself. I’d just been guided through all the wrong answers on a Physics paper, learned that Ella could speak French, enough to buy a first-class ticket to Bordeaux. I was impressed with my daughter. She understood my limited tolerance for everything. She had meticulously organised the interviews with five-minute gaps in between. We’d be in and out in an hour. She was prepping me in advance of each conversation, providing insights on the various personalities I’d meet. I’d been warned not to say anything, not to appear over-enthusiastic, I wasn’t to smile at people I didn’t know nor the ones I did in case it knocked us off schedule. I should definitely not be weird. “Hello Deborah,” said the lady who taught Chemistry. “Why did she call you by your name?” Ella asked. “She knows me,” I said. “You’re not supposed to know my teachers,” she replied. “We live in East Belfast,” I said. “It’s a commune”.
I wanted them to tell me a bit more about her, something that validated my parenting - her values, qualities, healthy cynicism. Does she have integrity? Is she kind? Did they know how talented an artist she is, that she doesn’t just rote-learn notes, she can draw the intestine? I’d discovered that her writing was too small, that she never asked any questions in any subject. I reckoned she just didn’t have any. Ella’s success was solely in her marks, whether they’d gone up or down, whether they were on target, how well she was managing to keep large amounts of information in her head. “Do you know where you went wrong?” asked her English teacher. “I ran out of time,” she said. Yes, some day, our time will run out, I thought. But it wasn’t the place to be philosophical. “It’s early days,” I found myself saying. I wasn’t sure whether I meant her GCSE preparation or her life. “I think your strength Ella is in your ability to remember dates,” said her History teacher. “The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed on Thursday 15 November 1985,” said Ella. “In what job will you be asked to suddenly recall that?” I said.
I went to a book launch1. “How are you involved?” asked the woman beside me. “I’m not,” I said, “I’m just in awe”. It was the ultimate success, ten years of hard graft culminating in something solid you could hold in your hand. One of the authors’ dads was standing behind me. He had been given a copy to proofread. So had other family members. The book was dedicated to their littlest loves. This moved me in a way I couldn’t even describe. It was a collective success. I decided I wanted a bright yellow cover on my book. I’d dedicate it to the four girls who inspired it. I’d be happy to call it a vanity project, gift copies to friends and family for evermore. I just wanted something solid in my hand.
I’d posted a photo on Twitter this week of my littlest loves, except they weren’t little anymore. They were shoulder to shoulder in their Girls’ Brigade uniforms, attendance badges filling their arms. I wasn’t sure I’d articulated what I wanted to say well enough. Parenting had been twenty years of hard graft, but I’d seen it as a side project. It kept getting in the way of success elsewhere. “Don’t just equate success with your professional life,” I said. Whilst career rewards were transitory, there’s a permanence in my children. I’d enjoyed Ella’s company, our hour together, her dry sense of humour, her pragmatism. She is a younger, better version of me.
“It’s subjective,” Ella said. She wasn’t sure how to improve on her long answer marks. She was right. Success is subjective. Other people tend to measure it for us. It’s elusive, illusory, especially if we look for it in just one place. When we don’t know how to define it, we will continually be searching for it, shifting the goalposts, never satisfied. There was a piece in the New York Times, ‘Yes, Your Job Is Important. But It’s Not All-Important’2. “Mostly, people want something different, something more. They want more satisfaction or more money or more respect. They want to feel as if they’re making a difference. They want to feel valued or seen or heard. They want the man in the next cubicle to chew less loudly,” it said. I felt exhausted thinking how much success we expect our job to deliver.
I thought of the podcast I refer every woman who is doubting herself to. Dawn O’Porter was sharing about a dark period in her life3. Her career had nosedived, TV work had dried up, the second Channel 4 series she’d been promised had never materialised, she’d been fired from a magazine column. She realised she was disposable, her confidence was in tatters, being rejected consumed her. She’d just met Chris O’Dowd. He was breaking into Hollywood. “He was in the stratosphere, and I was on the floor,” she said. It resonated. I’d been there. They were at the premiere of Bridesmaids, on the red carpet. She was introduced to Kristen Wiig, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy. “What do you do Dawn?” they asked. “Nothing,” she said. “It didn’t compare to what they were doing so there was no point in telling them,” she explained. It also resonated. I’ve said I do nothing too. Chris had tried to big her up. “Dawn has made some amazing documentaries,” he told them. “There’s a trap we can fall into,” she said. “If you’re not doing well at the time, what does your success before even matter because it didn’t get you anywhere”.
It was a friend who made sense of it for her. “You took some time out of work to find your husband,” she said. She had let one part of life overshadow the joy in all the other parts. “Your relationships, your friendships, motherhood are as much a part of your success as your career,” Dawn said. “And if everything else is going to sh*t, you can still say yes but I have great hair at the moment”. When my husband bigs me up, is the first to ‘like’ my tweet, give me fifty claps on Medium, I think not of my successful writing but of our successful partnership. When someone says “keep writing”, that is in itself success, that someone cares enough to say it to me. And there is always success somewhere if you look hard enough. I never ever underestimate the importance of good hair days.
At the end of an emotional day, at 21:37, I sent Ella a text. I wanted her to know I could see evidence of her success. “I’m really proud of you Ella,” I said. “You are working very hard so well done”.
At 21:38, I got a reply. “Why r u being weird”….