Do Better: A Place For Personal Motivation
The photo: I’m sitting in business class son a Cathay Pacific flight from New York City bound for Vancouver, Canada. Gold-rimmed aviators, a gift from a previous press trip on Qatar Airways, cover my eyes (I passed on wearing makeup as I’d gotten to a point where I could get what I wanted without looking like a Barbie Doll). A petite glass of champagne is held in a toasting-gesture, towards the camera.
The caption: “Ready to fly into the sky with @CathayPacific! I’m headed to Vancouver for a little #travelstoke. Get ready for a business class review for @airlinereporter #lifewelltravelled”
365 days later
The photo: I’m sitting on my couch. The X-Files movie is playing in the background. A pile of dirty laundry sits at my feet. It’s cold outside, for April. I’m not wearing any pants.
The caption: There is none. No $200 sunglasses. No seven-course inflight meal or luxury amenities kit. No champagne toast.
Those items don’t define a person. And they wouldn’t necessarily make me happier now. But I only had them because I had worked hard to get them: I was a pillar in my job field, a person who celebrated the life she loved and lead. I was someone who inspired others, because I was continuously inspired myself.
Seeing that first photo pop up in my Facebook newsfeed made me realize just how far I’ve backtracked in one year. I became a shell of a person. I stopped writing, I stopped traveling. I rarely had time to see my friends and family, and explore new places like I’d done in the past.
Any free time I had was spent indoors, shrouded in bedsheets, eyes glued to whatever was trending on Netflix (even if it wasn’t very good).
That photo made me realize how badly I’d lost my drive, the ambition that set me apart from everyone else. My philosophy to always “Do Better” is what got my my dream job as a lifestyle producer. It got me royalty checks for the first book I ever wrote, and opportunities to meet amazing people and speak at conferences around the world.
It got me on that business class flight to Vancouver, where I’d be discussing big ideas with core members of my former company. I was a respected part of their leadership team. I had a purpose, and I was making an impact.
Back then, I never thought the champagne would stop flowing. But when you lose your motivation, you’re lucky if the stewardess refills the water in your cheap plastic cup.
I’ve left one job, went to another job, left that job, and am starting a new job once more. There’s a large part of me that’s apprehensive about what is to come — after all, it was around this time last year I had willingly given up the chance to grow with one of the largest travel publications in pursuit of something I figured was the more advantageous career in news media.
It wasn’t.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t recover. I just need the right kind of motivation. It won’t come from one source; rather, it’s a combination of things:
Through this, I hope to revive the ambitious nature I once had. It’s not impossible to make a comeback (I’ve done it before), but it will take time. This space is a center for redeveloping the strong qualities I lost.
This is my chance to Do Better.
