Suleika Jaouad

I mean, I think back to college.

And I loved reading and I would never have been an English major.

And I remember saying this to my mom.

I said, it sounds like too much fun.

I need to pick something a little harder and more rigorous.

And I think so often we already know what we love.

But to your point, we feel like we have to earn the right.

To do the things we're already curious about, the things we already love.

But the thing is, the goalposts keep moving.

So that period of stuckness in my 20s or in your 20s, in very different contexts where you feel like you're watching everyone accelerate past you.

And for me, at least, I kept thinking, like, I just have to arrive somewhere.

And once I arrive, once I know who I am, once I know what I'm doing, then I can allow myself X, Y, and Z. But I'm starting to believe that life is a series of coming of age arcs.

There's no moment of arrival where you think, okay, I've worked enough.

I've done enough of the hard things.

I've earned enough of a right to be free.

I knew I loved to write.

I actually wrote mostly fiction.

But it didn't occur to me or it didn't feel like an option to try to become a fiction writer.

I felt like I, again, needed to find something practical, something that could pay the bills.

Yeah.