What Happens When You Screw Up Your Big Shot?

It’s not like it is in the movies

Have you ever had a dream job? I’m not talking about the job you think you want when you’re a kid and have no idea what it actually entails. I’m talking the dream job that’s in your mind because you’ve been working in that field and love what you do. It’s the pinnacle, and you only get there by being one of a select few. But you’re so engrossed in what you do, it’s such a part of you that there’s no question, no doubt. It’s everything you want.

Hollywood always has the protagonist of the story get their shot, then usually there’s a couple of stumbling blocks to create some conflict and drama, but then there’s the grand, swelling music before it ends happily ever after when they achieve everything they wanted.

Unfortunately real life doesn’t happen that way.

I had my dream shot 8 years ago now, or thereabouts. I was an intelligence specialist in the army and as I approached my discharge, I was right at the end of selection for one of those agencies that doesn’t appear in the news. I wanted it so badly. I wanted it because everything I said in my introduction, I felt about my career in intelligence. And then it happened. During a psych interview, the very last step in a process that had taken months, I flippantly said something stupid that I knew any day of the week I shouldn’t have said in such an interview. I caught the faintest sign in the interviewer’s eyes that she caught it too, and my heart sank. I’d fucked it.

A letter arrived 3 weeks later confirming my fate.

I hated myself for a long time after that. I was a deeply angry and unhappy person. It wasn’t some circumstance or some person I could be angry with either, it was all me. All my hopes and dreams blown in a single sentence. All my fault. I don’t suffer from depression, but I went into a 3 month depressive episode after that, the darkest time I’ve ever experienced in my life.

But I had a child on the way, and I had to get some job, any job. I learned the true meaning of humility, having to work casual retail in a camping store alongside teenagers. Humiliated isn’t even remotely adequate to describe how I felt. I then managed to get a job that would move my wife and unborn child back to our home city. It wasn’t remotely what I wanted to do or in line with my personality. Oh, and to rub salt into the wound, it paid $25k less than what I was earning in the army.

I managed to psychologically turn a corner though and 18 months later I got a much better job paying a hell of a lot more with a great company. I’ve made some lifelong friends there too. It’s stretched me more than I expected and I’m genuinely proud of some of the things I’ve accomplished during the last 6 years.

But then I was watching Sicario a couple of nights ago. I had the sudden thought that “this could have been your world. This was your world before you fucked it all up.”

I never questioned my work when I was in that world. It fulfilled me. I might not have enjoyed being in the army, but I loved my job. I never questioned if it was important, if I was making a difference. I knew it inside. After that sudden thought came to me while watching the movie, it hit me like a freight train in the face.

There’s a hole inside of me.

I’ve patched over that hole by throwing myself into my work and my hobbies (more accurately described as obsessions) for the last 8 years, trying to achieve everything I possibly could. I didn’t realise I was doing it because I didn’t realise there was a hole until that moment. And in that moment was also the realisation that I might never fill that hole. Because life is different now, and that career that I wanted so badly is never coming back. Unlike the movies, there is no second chance here.

Facing that fact over the last couple of weeks has been rough. Not 3 month depressive episode rough, but rough enough that it’s forced me to ask really hard questions of myself. Questions like why do I feel like achievement is going to fill that hole?

My wife has told me that people often ask questions about me, wondering why I never seem to be satisfied, that I never seem to have enough. Why is he always so 100% commitment on everything? Maybe if I can impress everyone around me enough, then I’ll feel like I’ve actually fulfilled my potential. If I could win some kind of award at work as a result of people valuing my contribution enough, if I could place top 5 at nationals in my sport, if I could publish a book that does really well, then maybe the potential I see in myself isn’t a lie. That despite my failure, I haven’t fucked things up completely.

Having thought about all of this over the past week or two, I’ve realised that this almost frenzied approach to life is never going to fill the hole, it’s just going to make me increasingly miserable and disappointed.

There’s an important truth here though: I’ve got an incredible life. I’ve got a job that I like enough in a company that I like enough. That alone forces me to face the fact that I’ve got more in this world than most people will ever have. But I’m lucky enough to have huge passions outside of work as well— writing, rock climbing, cooking for friends and family. Maybe also the knowledge that I’m not going to die with anything left on the table.

How can I be so selfish to feel that my life isn’t enough with all that?

There’s a war going on inside of me right now. One side of me is working on being kinder to myself. Of letting go of these needs I seem to feel that keep me unsatisfied all the time. It’s telling me to realise that I am enough, that I don’t need to prove things to those around me or myself.

The other side of me is saying “well, what is going to satisfy you then, and are you going to get your shit together and go after it?” After all, even with the great life I’ve got, I can’t keep going knowing that there is a gaping hole in me that can’t be filled. That’s not healthy. Do I just gloss over it? Do I just accept my fate? What kind of example does that set for my daughter, for everyone around me? I don’t want to die with that gigantic regret that never got resolved.

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you’ll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. — Charlie Kaufman

It’s forced me to look at my writing seriously for the first time. Writing has been a constant in my life for the last 20 years. Any time I have spent away from it made me feel like life wasn’t quite right, despite the fact that I’ve only been earning money for it in the last 5 years. These last couple of months have probably been the most important for me in that sense, because being amongst other writers who like my work, that actually does make me feel like the hole is being filled.

The problem with writing is that I’ve never seen it as anything more than a hobby. Too afraid to try and make it a job, because I don’t want the stress of it to make me not like it anymore. Too afraid that it’s never going to pay enough. Too afraid to really put myself out there and face the myriad of rejections that everyone faces. But then a quote from Michael Lewis that I heard just a few weeks ago hit me. I knew at the time it was important, but I hadn’t quite worked out why until a few days ago.

Privilege corrupts. You’re always doing what money can buy instead of what duty demands. You’re living your life as if nothing matters so much that you should suffer for it.

That last sentence, it really hits me. I’ve been too used to Medium publications reaching out to me to actually submit and follow the rules on a couple of the major ones I’ve wanted to be featured in. I’ve not been willing to take the chance to go to the gatekeepers of this profession and face rejection. I’ve always taken the easy way out, taking what came to me rather than striving and suffering for something greater.

It was the same when I was leaving the army. I expected to not have to prove myself, because I thought I’d already worked hard enough and proved my worth. I was wrong. If I’d been better prepared for that interview, if I’d been better prepared for that whole damn time at the end of the army, I’d be working in my dream job right now. It’s taken me eight years to learn that lesson, but it’s finally sunk in.

Life seems to me inherently absurd. It’s not like the movies, where the hero’s journey ensures that everything works out exactly as it’s supposed to in the end. It’s full of conflicts, limitations and contradictions. It’s full of stumbling around in the dark, hoping that you finally open the right door. It’s hoping that there actually is a right door. I feel like this time there might be, but who knows? I guess it’s a leap of faith.

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