the anti-gaze: part three.
this one’s about the part of you that’s tired of being impressive (or, work without the performance).

It started with one of those harmless-sounding ice breakers. You know the type. New client meeting, onboarding shenanigans, a little question called “fun fact about yourself”. Which. Honestly. Feels a bit like psychological warfare dressed up in Comic Sans.
i thought about it for longer than i care to admit back when i was still clocking into corporate life. Trying to come up with something that sounded interesting but casual. Accomplished, but not try-hard. Maybe a little mysterious, but still cool. Something that would say i’m worth noticing without actually saying please validate me and possibly give me a pay rise.
Looking back, it feels like the moment i first noticed how much my ambition was tangled up in being seen, in performing a version of myself that other people might applaud.
Which is when i clocked it. The gaze hadn’t disappeared, it had just changed clothes.
It wasn’t checking my reflection in a coffee shop window or checking who had viewed my Instagram story. It was wearing business casual now. It was inside offices and inboxes and performance reviews. It wasn’t asking, do you look good today? It was asking, how productive are you? how insightful? how professional? Still measuring me. Still deciding if i was someone worth choosing.
Except this time, i was in on the performance.
For a long time, my ambition didn’t feel entirely mine. It was stitched with other people’s expectations, other people’s applause. i wanted to be seen as exceptional. i wanted someone important to look at me and say, you’re different, you’re the one we’ve been waiting for.
It looked like:
Saying yes to jobs that sounded good on LinkedIn but made me feel like wallpaper.
Burning myself out just enough to be seen as committed, but not so much that anyone could tell. Until they could.
Collecting praise like Tesco Clubcard points, even though i had no idea what i was saving them for.
Smiling with my whole face in meetings, while silently thinking, i don’t know what i’m doing and i think i might cry after this call.
There’s this slippery way that ambition gets tangled up in how you’re perceived. You start out wanting to do something meaningful and somehow end up curating a version of success that looks better than it feels.
But lately, i’ve been living the question instead of just wondering about it. Since stepping away from the corporate scaffolding, i’ve been up close and personal with the quieter side of ambition. The part that doesn’t announce itself with titles or success metrics, because it really doesn’t care if anyone’s watching.
i work for myself now. Not in the hustle-harder, scale-at-all-costs kind of way, but in a way that feels softer. More human. A softer kind of culture, stitched together with long walks, slow mornings, and work that means something to me, even if no one cheers for it.
i’m not against ambition. Not even close. i love people who are full of fire and ideas. i love folks who stay up too late writing, or tinkering, or planning weird little projects that don’t make sense to anyone else but them. i love the big dreamers, the tiny detail obsessors. i love the builders.
But i want my ambition to belong to me now. Not to my CV. Not to what sounds impressive at drinks. Not to the invisible man i sometimes imagine reading my dormant dating profile and thinking, ah, she’s got her life together.
i want to want what i want because i want it.
And that means rewriting what success means. Which sounds poetic when you say it out loud, but is actually kind of disorienting in practice. Because if i’m not chasing admiration, or prestige, or curated Instagram proof of a meaningful life then what am i aiming for?
i’ve been paying attention. And so far, success looks a bit like this:
Doing work that i care about, even if it’s small or invisible.
Saying no to shiny things that leave me feeling grey inside.
Being okay with not knowing where i’ll be in five years.
Creating messy, wonky, honest things that might not ever go viral.
Resting before i break. Resting even when i don’t “deserve” it.
And the strangest part? It’s not less. Even though it might look like less. It feels like more. Because it feels like mine.
Not borrowed. Not for show. And most definitely not a pitch.
Of course, leaving the corporate bubble didn’t make the need to perform vanish overnight. i still catch myself drafting “About Me” blurbs in my head that are cooler than my actual life. i still imagine some benevolent stranger discovering my work and saying, you’re brilliant, here’s a publishing deal, a podcast, and a very tasteful mid-century barn conversion in the north Cotswolds.
But living this new way has taught me to notice those old reflexes, to catch when i’m writing for applause instead of connection, for recognition instead of resonance.
i’m learning to ask myself: would i still want this if no one else was watching?
The other day i turned down a project that would’ve looked amazing on paper, but made my stomach clench in a very specific kind of dread. Then i wrote something soft, small and entirely mine. Almost no one saw it.
Still felt like a God.
Love,
Lyss. x
If this stirred something in you, feel free to share a thought in the comments. Quiet rambles, honest confessions, half-formed musings, they’re all welcome here.
<3
p.s. i write these as a way of figuring things out in real time. If you’d like to read more of this sort of thing (the quiet behind-the-scenes parts of ambition, creativity, and being a dichotomous human) you can subscribe here. No pressure. Just if it feels like the kind of corner you’d want to come back to.
Coming soon:
Part four: what if getting older isn’t a tragedy (or, ageing without the apology). Because maybe growing up means giving less of a crap and learning to love ourselves more, twisty bits and all.