Michael Smoak

What would it be like if I had a little bit more fun?

This guy asked me last night, I have this burning ambition.

The Q&A of one of my work in progress shows, I have this burning ambition.

I can't turn it off.

What should I do?

I said, just become really, really successful.

It's the quickest solution.

Use the fuel.

Hey man, I've got this massive gas tank and I can't take my foot off the gas pedal.

All right, drive until you run out of fuel.

Like just go, keep going and then eventually you'll run out.

So it's a strange one though, right?

Because obviously the difficulty of this discussion is that saying to anybody who has a burning ambition that the end result of their ambition is not going to make them happy is

is like telling a hungry man that food doesn't really matter as a fat man.

And you're stripping away from people the very fuel that they want to use to keep going.

And it feels a little bit like rug pulling someone's dream out from underneath them.

So it's a very contentious point to talk about, but I think I'm seeing so many more people discuss it as people's speed run careers.

People can get to the top of a career in a pretty short amount of time.

And then it's not what they expected.

So I think more and more people are having this mini existential quarter life crisis thing.