In a tiny conference room, under the stairs, the floor dropped out from under me.
“Unfortunately, your position has been eliminated.”
Immediately, resentment began swelling in my belly.
I accepted their paperwork, handed over my laptop, and wandered out of the building, where I bumped into my boss in the parking lot.
“Wait… you too?” I asked incredulously.
“Yep. Me too,” he replied.
In a matter of hours, 30% of the company became collateral in what I now understand is a classic startup funding negotiation with investors — Cut your staff costs, and we’ll hand over more money.
😟 I was devastated.
Just weeks before, I sacrified two weekends in a row to repair business operations when our POS systems went down. (No one asked me to do this, btw. I fully volunteered.)
But did no one witness my loyalty? My dedication??? My commitment to this vision?!!!
Dazed in Venice Beach, sipping an 11am beer with my laid-off comrades, the only thing I could think was, “Well, what in the fuck am I gonna do now?”
That had been my dream job, and my first $100K salary. I had turned it into my identity. I really thought I had made it, and instead, I was heartbroken and terrified.
Two months later, I started a new job and found myself crying in the bathroom on the 3rd week. I felt like I was pretending to be someone who was entirely unfamiliar to me now.
Where did her ambition go?
As I stood on the roof of the office parking garage in Downtown LA, I decided there had to be something better.
I quit after only 6 weeks.
I would love to tell you that I leapt and the net appeared. That’s what they tell you will happen! But I leapt and tumbled all the way down the cliffs edge for several years.
Reader, I flailed.
I staged houses, I worked some very odd jobs, I tried to start a few different businesses, but I was really lost and even worse — desperately burned out.
I longed the Girlboss version of myself. She was tight. She was controlled. She had it all managed, sorted, and scheduled… or so I thought.
Underneath my Girlbossery was a woman so desperate to know where she fit in, that she would contort herself into whatever shape would give her a digestible identity.
🛋️ On the way down, I started therapy.
Molding myself to fit in not only showed up in my work, but equally in my relationships. I shape-shifted for whoever would love me, accept me, or pay me. I thought those identities made me cool and desirable, but in the end they made me hollow.
My reckoning happened quietly during the pandemic, while I completely started over at 33. I received the long-overdue ADHD and cPTSD diagnosis lingering from the childhood I thought I could outrun with my performance of productivity.
I became unrecognizable from the hyper-productive version of myself that I was using to mask the pain and insecurity of never feeling like I was enough. It became difficult to do basic tasks like dishes and laundry.
In order to find my new normal, I was going to have to burn it all down.
⛓️💥 I had to let the Girlboss go.
She still pops in now and then, but she’s much harder to access now that I’m actively unmasking from the song and dance of productivity for productivity’s sake.
I miss her and I love her, because she’s the part of me that gets shit done without overthinking everything, but I’m on much better terms with her now.
☁️ Slowing down felt like torture.
The ultimate manifestation of my Girlboss was a tightly packed schedule, orthorexia, six-pack abs, and 2-hour commute.
It’s painful now to look at pictures myself during this time, because all I see is a gorgeous, empty young woman who desperately wanted someone to tell her where she fit in and what she had to offer.
That layoff set my ego on fire, and ego death is u-g-l-y. Healing is gnarly, dude.
One of the reasons I packed my schedules so tightly was so that there was no time to feel. To have an open pocket of time in my day might mean that I would have to sit quietly with myself… *shudders*
I was going to have to explore what about me was inherently valuable outside my work identities?
❤️🩹 Ugh, getting in touch with my heart
Girlbosses wake up at 6am, go to pilates, have a green juice, and seamlessly jump from task to task without thought or feeling… right? right???
My years of Girlbossery now seem like one of those sleeping bags that you jam into the tiny little stuff-sack, but it continues to pop out all over the place. I was cramming my emotions and passions down, shoving them away, because they might get in the way of my productivity!!!!
In the name of my career, I stopped painting, singing, reading, and writing. I thought it was more attractive and lucrative to become an impenetrable Girlboss.
As I began to lower the mask, I discovered the little softie inside me. Someone much more emotional and tender than I had ever allowed myself to be. To my great delight now, the little girl who would rather paint alone in the back yard than play hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids was still alive inside me.
But allowing her to come back would mean getting in touch with my tenderness. Not very Impenetrable Girlboss of me, but I’m delighted she was still in there, and all I needed to do was let her out.
🪁 Finding the place where I can be ambitious and soft
As I started healed from all this Girlbossery burnout and existential unravelling, I accidentally became a productivity influencer on Tiktok, because I was learning to work with my neurodivergent brain for the first time in my life.
Time makes a hypocrite out of all of us, I guess.
I went from overriding my feelings with productivity to overriding my productivity with my feelings.
This extreme pendulum swing taught me to regulate myself, take responsibility, do one thing at a time, take on less, dream bigger, and build a new toolkit for the sweet spot between ambition and softness.
It exists, and it won’t make sense to a lot of people.
Also, those are not my people.
Being an Ambitious Softie is my middle path where I can build my business
, and a few other irons I’ve got in the fire.I no longer want to live at the extremes of hyper-productive or blob-on-the-couch, because I know there’s a way to pursue my dreams without destroying my nervous system.
xo, Anna
If you’d like to explore the middle path with me, I’d love to have you around.
This post was written at
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Absolutely alongside you as an ambitious softie. In fact my current intention for today, and possibly the year incoming is to be unapologetically myself. But not in the way of 'orher people tell me how to be unapologetically myself by dancing on camera or saying spicy shit' but in a way that I actually do what feels right for me whether it adheres to any of the rules or expectations that are not written for me. Speaking my truth that is often overtly loving and a little awkward. Sharing things that may not even make sense to me yet because I'm excited about knowing something new in my body. Allowing my pace to be both slow and fast, when each feel right to me. Thank you for sharing a little of your heart with us ✨
perfect critique of the trash that is capitalism