Ambition.

I've seldom thought of my gigs as parts of a "career" as such. I don't really think out my next move as much as most people from my peer group seem to do. I'm here, I'm trying to do the best I can, something happens and I move on, but it takes me a while. I'm not afraid of change, just not planning for it in short intervals.

I am fast approaching an age where I can't think of myself as young anymore. It is a little shocking - you live with yourself from day to day and know there are changes, but when you take the long view backward, you realize 20 years have gone by since this or that memory.

This means that it's time to think more about what I want the rest of my time in this work to look like, I suppose. But for me, I'm ready to have people with a deeper skill set and the requisite love for the community take leadership and move the conversation forward. I'm not going anywhere, but I don't have delusions of being the next greatest anything. I think it's freeing, actually. Suspending the ego and ambition as best we can without sacrificing drive and passion for the work might be the only way to grow old in work such as this.

I much better understand the idea that many have put forward about a shift in priorities when you have a child. At this point, while it's not true that nothing else matters or that my passion for some of the work is still strong, I feel a different sense of purpose when I'm conscious about the role I play for this little one. There will be a hundred amazing organizers, writers, lawyers, workers who I can look at and say, if I did something or many things differently, perhaps I could have achieved what they did or will. But my little boy will only have one father, however I play that role.

And that's quite a difference - striving to be better than the best in everything in the outside world, or striving to be the best you can, which is all your little one will know, inside your unit.