Accidentally Ambitious?
I thought I would be cluckier at this point of my life, but I'm not.
The only reason I am mentioning this, is that it signifies a massive shift in thought process for me. Up until this point (and I'm not sure when 'this point' began), I have wanted to be a younger mother and have been convinced that I would never let my career 'get in the way' of this.
Now I am successful in my career, the thought of having children is being pushed further from the forefront of my mind.
Not necessarily because I think that having children will hold me back (although I know it will), but because my priorities have shifted and at the moment I still want to put myself first.
Shocking for a 24 year old? I didn't think so.
But I have found responses to my train of thought quite shocking. I have heard that I shouldn't stop thinking about it, that this is the best time of my life to both have a child and find the 'perfect man', and that I will regret it when I am successful at 40, but alone and dried up. Apparently these are the things you tell a young woman when she says she has goals outside of family life - which isn't okay.
Young men (or any men) do not get asked about their reproductive futures, they do not get told that their will regret putting their careers first and they are not required to justify every decision they make that doesn't involve bringing the new generation into the world.
I never used to think of myself as ambitious, nor did I particularly want to be. I wanted to float through life like a feather, drifting in the wind. But sadly, life doesn't work like that - not for women anyway. Making your way in the world as a young woman means that you have to fight for every single thing you want - even if the only thing you really want is for people to stop having an opinion on what you do with your own uterus.
Does that make you ambitious? Hell yes.
Run at me fools.
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