I got a lesson in being better at ambition from Albert Hammond Jnr yesterday.

Yesterday I was driving into town, listening to an interview on RadioNZ (fuck yeah, public radio!) with Albert Hammond Jnr.

It was a pretty stock standard interview: You’ve got a new solo project dropping soon, it’s a bit different from the stuff you did with The Strokes, etc and so on.

There was a bit at the end that struck me so much though, that I actually got out my phone and made a note. Like an olden-timey guy.

The interviewer asked “so what do you hope for this new solo project? What do you want to have happen?”.

And Albert thought for a second, like he was a bit taken aback by the question, and then replied, “Well, I want it all”.

So simple. Said with a quiet confidence and the deepest sense of inevitability. I want it all.

And it suddenly occurred to me, that I want it all too. And yet, somehow strangled between cultural cringe and a debilitating case of imposter syndrome, my cry comes out sounding… hopeful. Or worse, resigned.

It seems that’s one of the hardest things about ambition. To have it is a torment. To demonstrate it requires will-power, sacrifice and control. And to fulfil it requires a certain amount of letting go.

Trusting and allowing that things will fall into place, just when you need them too. Having faith that luck will be on your side. Believing in your own inevitability.

It skitters close enough to entitlement, to ring all my tall poppy, don’t-get-too-up-yourself-mate alarm bells. But you know what? Fuck it. This this the decade of embracing my cringe, afterall.

So I’m working on mine. Starting with “I want it all”.