This is For The Success Addicts and The Overly Ambitious.
hi, my name is Aley and I’m addicted to success.
yep, you read that correctly. i come to you humbly with this confession in hopes that as I live my truth, it won’t be held against me.
this is probably a relatively heavy truth bomb that I’m sharing with you, so let me just dial things back so I can give you a bit of context behind how I came to this realization. and the best way to do this is by sharing a little about the younger version of the Aley you’ve come to know.
throughout grade school and through college, I was an honors student. i never really thought of myself as a gifted child but my grades and coursework proved otherwise. although I didn’t choose to be in these classes, I did eventually come to embrace the sort of “set-apartness” of the education I was granted and rose to the occasion. there was something aspiring about maintaining stellar grades in school and being deemed a “smart Black girl,” (toxic, maybe) but it became the small piece of the identity that I was able to attach myself to.
but by the time I hit college, all that changed.
i remember the first time I actually flunked a class. it was a Biology course. the feeling was so foreign to me, the only emotion my body could channel in response was heated embarrassment. not to mention I was in the Honors College at my quaint HBCU, so a dip in my GPA was costly to my good-standing.
what was this feeling in the pit of my stomach and wearing red on my face? was this… failure?
after that experience, I worked tirelessly to pull my GPA up from the pits of a 2.9 and completed the semester with a 4.0. although I was proud of the progress I had made, I can’t say that I didn’t leave the moment a bit bruised. not only did I switch majors but I realized that if I wasn’t going to assassinate my self-esteem over my college coursework, I was going to channel it somewhere else, which happened to be: my blog.
in the early days, my blog was my everything. i had a unique and highly undesirable post-grad transition for the first 10-months, so I decided that I would throw myself at the digital space I was creating. there was no crafty algorithm, just an organic community and growth. when that all changed, so did the way I looked at myself through the lens of my online presence.
my online metrics became my grading scales while likes and comments became the pass or fail rubric I followed. it may sound crazy to you, but for me, these were my side effects of being a gifted child turned overly ambitious adult.
over the last few months, as I’ve navigated through this forced-freelance life (thanks, COVID :,) ) being a content creator has been quite the doozy. through every wave and trend that 2020, quarantine, social injustice uprising, elections, COVID-19, and chronic boredom has brought us, I’ve always made an effort to be apart of it. i made Instagram my graduate school, and these trends were courses on my “add/drop” forms.
none of this is inherently wrong, I think we can all agree that there’s a level of success that we want to reach in whatever craft we find ourselves in, mine just happens to live on the internet. 😭
no matter your trade, excelling in excellence is the goal, right? especially now, that I’ve placed my focus into being a content creator and writer, that same girl that got a boost of confidence from a glowing report card is still inside of me, wanting to glow online.
still, the constant pressure to “perform well” was robbing me of having a joyous creative experience and took the “FUN” out of fundamental creativity.
i had to chat with my friend, and he made me realize that I was becoming my brand instead of allowing my brand to be an extension of who I am. that realization brought me to this conclusion: we are not brands. we are complex humans with layers and depths, and intricate stories. we feel, we cry. we are moving breathing creations, not the curated square boxes we share with the world. who we are on social media isn’t even the half or a QUARTER of who we really are. it’s just a morsel. only a gleams into the wonder of our existence.
we are real.
“we are not brands. we are complex humans with layers and depths, and intricate stories. we feel, we cry. we are moving breathing creations, not the curated square boxes we share with the world. ”
i’m sharing this today to speak to the gifted child in you. the one with the ambition and audacious imagination: everything you are and everything you create is enough. you had a purpose long before these apps and algorithms were created. the beauty in being creative is that whatever life throws at us, we decide to make something beautiful out of it. and that right there... that work you do is important because your heart guided you to create it.
let that inner child free from the pressure to perform their worth through works.
with love,
ya girl, Aley
〰 before you go: let me know how this post reached you! are you suffering from Post Talented Gifted Child Disorder? what are some of your side effects? mine is over-ambition and not being kind to myself in the process. but I’m working on that :,) let me know yours in the comments below, I’d love to hear!
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(also, if this post or any of my work has connected with you, and you feel led to support ya local hope-dealer, feel free to leave a donation to my cashapp: $aleyarion) thank you! ❤️