Success Shapeshifts
Dear Creator Diary,
I’ve been thinking about the way success shapeshifts.
How the finish line moves just as you’re about to cross it. How what once felt like a dream come true, later feels… small.
Not that I’m ungrateful. Just somehow unfulfilled.
It’s as if the moment we reach what we longed for, the longing reconfigures itself. Not because the achievement didn’t matter, but because the version of us who wanted it no longer feels like they exist at all.
There was a time when I would have done anything to gather a small group of people who truly understood my work. When 12 people in a room felt like a crowd.
But we don’t stay in those early dreams for long.
They evolve.
They escalate.
We want more reach, more recognition, more proof that we matter.
And when the “more” comes?
There’s a moment, briefly, where I hold my breath hoping to take it all in. And then it fades, faster than it came.
And a new objective takes center stage.
Sometimes I wonder if the chase is part of the problem. If we’ve become so accustomed to climbing that we’ve forgotten how to stand still. To look out at the view and say: this is it.
Not this will be it.
Not this is it when…
Just… this is it.
I don’t know if I’ve ever sat in that moment long enough to feel it fully. To absorb what I’ve built without wondering what else it could become.
But I want to try.
Because if I’m always striving to be seen, I might miss the ones who are already looking right at me.
And if I keep reaching for the next milestone, I might forget how far I’ve already come.
