The False Idea of Success

From the time we are in grade school, we are taught to think about what we want to be when we grow up. Susie wants to be an astronaut. Billy wants to be a doctor. Rachel wants to be a lawyer. As you’re reading this, I’m sure you can recall the very first career you had in mind for your life. And all of our young lives, we are taught to put everything into reaching for our dreams. We are told to work hard in school and get good grades. We are told to stay disciplined and to not get into trouble. We are taught that if we follow all of the right steps, go onto college, and reach the career of our dreams, everything else in our lives will work itself out. At one point, each one of you has heard this rhetoric in your lives. And if you passed on college, either by choice or not, you were most likely shamed after the point for not having a degree. You were told how hard life will be for you because you didn’t go to college. And you were most likely encouraged to pursue college in the future. 

We live in a society that projects that there is a one size fits all solution for every problem we encounter. And the truth is there isn’t just one path to success. But to understand this, you would have to understand that there are different definitions of success. When I ask you to picture yourself as a successful individual, what do you see? Probably money, maybe a nice house, maybe a nice car, maybe a hefty Instagram following. Maybe you see yourself lounging on a private beach in the Caribbean somewhere. Maybe you see yourself behind the desk of a big important financial office somewhere in New York City. For a long time, I saw success in this same way. I believed that my value as a human being was derived from how successful I was, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

I have always been considered ‘intelligent’. When I was in elementary school, I was placed in a program for the ‘Gifted and Talented’ because of how high my standardized test scores were. My 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Elmer, was so enamored with my writing that she would call me her ‘protege’ and would submit my short fiction works to local contests. When I graduated middle school, I was accepted into the International Baccalaureate program at Princess Anne High School, the most prestigious college prep program in Virginia Beach, and I was the only person from my middle school who was selected. My freshman year of high school, I attended the National Student Leadership Conference for Journalism at American University in Washington DC, and I was the only freshman in the entire country selected for the program. I used to keep a list of classic books next to my bed that I wanted to read because I wanted to be just like Rory Gilmore. I had aspirations of attending Ivy League schools, and as I got older my choice school became the University of Texas at Austin for its journalism program. I had myself set up for what most would deem a promising future, but that all kind of fell apart in high school. 

Me (pictured in the teal jumpsuit in the center) at the 2007 National Student Leadership Conference at American University in Washington DC 

I was an emotionally neglected kid, and for most of my life I believed that it was through my successes that my true value lied. I would throw myself into my school work because thinking about or dwelling on anything else that was occurring in my life at the time was just not possible. My grades and my perceived ‘successes’ were one of the only things that brought me joy. But the truth is that they didn’t bring me joy. I had built a picture in my head of what I thought would bring me joy, and I was trying to be someone that I wasn’t in order to gain value, acceptance, and love. And when a few traumatic events happened around my sophomore year of high school, I couldn’t keep up the same dedication. My 4.2 GPA became non existent in the blink of an eye. I took AP classes, but I wasn’t sleeping at night and would doze off during class. I was Entertainment Editor of my newspaper, but would deal with horrible verbal assaults and attacks at home that would leave me feeling dejected, depressed, and certainly not motivated to do anything, let alone go interview my fellow peers for an article. I had the same aspirations, but I was falling further and further away from that. Couple these issues with normal high school teenage angst, friend fights, bullying, and boy problems, and I was done for. Senior year came and Allie who received a 32 on her ACT, a 1710 on her SAT, was active with her extracurriculars and received several letters of recommendation, did not get into a single out of state school because of her 3.1 GPA. I found out that I was admitted to Colorado State University on the day of my graduation (yeah, after all that hard work I was looking at getting my high school diploma and not knowing where I would be going to college). 

One of my senior photos by Clayton Jenkins in Fort Collins, CO

But this failure did not kick my false perception of success, that would come later down the road. I had to pass up my acceptance to Colorado State University, and an internship with the Director of Athletics at CSU that was set up through my humanities teacher, Mr. Wright. Instead, I chose to leave my abusive household after being kicked out of my house with no notice for the 3rd time that year. It was two weeks after I graduated, I was 2 minutes home late from curfew and the fight escalated so much that I was demanded to leave the house without grabbing clothes or even shoes. The next day, I said enough, I will not be treated this way anymore. I moved in with a family friend, and worked 3 jobs from 8am to 11pm to get on my feet while my friends were preparing to embark on their next adventures. Fast forward 2 years (full of stories for another time) and I had my precious daughter, Madison, at 19 years old. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was more fuel to my drive to be successful. I wanted to have a profession that I felt my daughter could be proud of. Its funny to think about now, because what we all seem to forget is that all a child really wants is to be loved. 

I worked almost every day for 3 years, first with Diamond Resorts and then with L’Auberge de Sedona, picking up extra shifts whenever I could, always trying to do more and to be the best. Then I was hired at Brava Medical Group, a third party extension of Carl Zeiss that was managed by an older lesbian couple. One of the women was called the ‘bulldog’, she had been in sales for over 30 years and had worked her way up to being a senior sales executive at an all male firm in Chicago years before starting Brava. Her wife was the sweet one who loved her dogs and would bring them to work with her every day, and she was the one who initially hired me. I was first hired as a telemarketer where my job was to cold call doctors offices and hospitals and pitch the new medical technology being released by Carl Zeiss. I had my own little cubicle that I decorated with pictures and knickknacks, a Monday through Friday schedule, and paid holidays off. I was also the youngest person hired within this company by almost 10 years. The pay was great, which of course made me feel like I was doing something right, but the atmosphere felt like a scene straight out of Office Space. If I was a minute late back from lunch, my manager would email me. I would hit the highest call volume of the day, and she would tell me I’m not taking enough time on calls. I would have a low call volume, and she would tell me I’m not producing enough and I’m spending too much time on my phone. I would wear a dress, and she would tell me it’s too short. I’d wear jeans and she’d tell me they were too distressed. Every day I was talked to about something, and in the meantime, she would go and gossip with the girls on the other side of the office about her opinions of me. She had even told a coworker that she had a problem with my cell phone usage before she directly brought it up to me. It felt like a version of high school all over again, meanwhile my manager was almost 10 years older than I was at the time. 

Me in my telemarketing cubical at Brava Medical Group in Sedona, AZ in 2016

It came to a point after about 5 months on the job. I was going through a very rough, emotional time in my life. A lot of things were changing and 3 years later, I recognize that this was the beginning of a total mental breakdown I had that provoked me to work on my mind, my soul, my happiness, and my mental health. I was at work one day and I couldn’t concentrate for the life of me. I knew I had already taken care of most of my pending ‘interests’, and I had already hit my call volume for the day. I asked my manager if I could go home for the day just to take some much needed solo time. She snapped at me that I was always having issues, I had jobs and responsibilities I needed to adhere to, and no I could not go home. Then an hour later, I was pulled into her superior’s office and told that I would take 4 days off, UNPAID, to ‘sort out my shit’. All because I had asked to go home early one day. 

So I took the 4 days off, didn’t complain, and tried to look at it as an opportunity to relax. When I returned to work, I came back with a new motivation and mindset, but that didn’t change the amount of disrespect and lack of recognition I was receiving. A month later, right after our company Christmas party, I went to the woman who had initially hired me, and asked if I could be transferred departments. I explained to her everything that was going on with my manager, and how this toxic energy was preventing me from being able to do my job to the best of my ability. She looked at me, said that my manager had been at the company longer than me and was more trusted, I was obviously very young and she did not have an interest in turning this company into a drama filled atmosphere, and if she transferred me to a different department, how did she know I wouldn’t cause the same problem somewhere else? I felt a little dejected, and as I drove my coworker home I expressed to her that I didn’t know how long I could continue working in this kind of setting. She told me to take the Christmas break and to try to dump all of this from my mind and come back with a fresh start. So once again, I did. 

After the new year, one of Brava’s Inside Sales reps left the position and the job became available. The Inside Sales department was Brava’s bread and butter, and was managed by our bulldog CEO. The responsibility of this individual was to call doctors and hospitals that already owned Zeiss equipment, and either pitch them on buying a new service contract after their warranty period ends, or renewing an already existing service contract. It was a base salary of $30K a year, and you worked off quarterly quotas, if you met your quota you would receive a $5,000 bonus. If you exceeded your quota, you would receive a $10,000 bonus. When the position opened up, my manager was called down to fill it. After one week, word spread around the office that she had not been able to close a single deal. The following week, she had to miss a day because her child was sick. Our CEO was so upset that she had been doing so poorly and then had to miss a day that she decided to fill the position with someone else (much to my manager’s chagrin when she came back the next day). When she looked up who had the highest call volume in the company and the highest interest success rate, my name came up. I remember when I heard she wanted to speak to me and instantly my nerves hit. It was a cold February day and I was wearing a too baggy flannel, jeans, and my Doc Marten boots. I looked like Kurt Cobain’s slightly more feminine cousin. I went down to meet with her and she offered me the job. I was shocked and of course accepted. I became not just a Brava employee but a Zeiss employee. There were individual sales reps to represent each region of the United States, 7 of us in total. My first quarter I received the 2nd highest sales volume in the company while coming into the job halfway through a quarter. I was congratulated all throughout the company, and we used the $5K bonus to take Madison to Disneyland for her 4th birthday. On the outside, I was what I would have finally deemed a ‘success’. I was the youngest person in my position by over a decade and the only one without a 4 year Bachelor’s degree. I was also a 24 year old teen mom who was making a $30K base annual salary. My family and friends would constantly tell me how proud they were of me and what I was doing. But on the inside, it was a completely different story. 

Me at California Adventure Park in Anaheim, CA with Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde

Once the second quarter hit, the pressure was on. I understood why everyone nicknamed her the ‘bulldog’, and she was constantly riding me like all of her success and hopes depended on me. She would call me her ‘golden pony’. And when I did not start the quarter closing sales like I had ended the last quarter, her rage ensued. I would stay late and work extra days just to have a good meeting with her and solid numbers to report. It wore on me, and as I started to work and heal feelings and boundaries in my personal life, I started to come across things I could not tolerate in my professional life. At one point, she was lighting me up in a meeting because I had been unable to close a renewal that had been a customer of ours for 10 years. This specific customer was so dissatisfied with Zeiss’ business and customer service that there was absolutely nothing I could say to him to change his mind. As she was talking down on me, I began to cry. She stopped talking and looked at me as if I had slapped her in the face. She asked me why I was crying and I explained to her that I had recently been diagnosed with high functioning anxiety and depression and that sometimes direct confrontations are hard for me to handle. She looked at me and said “Wow, had I known I had hired someone with some crazy emotional disorders, I would have never given you this position.” At the time, I didn’t even think about how inappropriate her comment was. I had been treated like it was okay to be talked to in this way my whole life, so I took it, beat myself up for things I couldn’t control, and went back to my cubicle. 

The next day, I was driving to work like I did almost every day. It was around 8:00am, I had to be there by 8:30. I was listening to music on the radio and passing by the same landmarks I did every day. And the same as every day, I was fighting to find the gumption and motivation within myself to go to work today. “I don’t like my job.” I thought to myself. And almost instantly I thought, “Have I ever liked any job I’ve ever had?”. The question hit me like a ton of bricks. All of my life I had been driving myself towards this idea of success, but not once did I ever ask myself if I was truly happy or if I was enjoying what I was doing. I then asked myself “What would I like to do?” And the answer that resounded so loudly in my mind was to write. As soon as the thought came up, I laughed. Was that even possible? I just told myself that in life you have to do things you don’t want to do, I would bury my head down, and keep up the good fight. But to be happy? Was that even an option? I asked myself why do I go to my job, if I don’t like my job, and I ran down the list of all of the expectations and responsibilities I had placed upon myself. I have to make money to pay the bills, this is a good job that I am building my career towards, you’re not always going to like your job, etc. But the thought stuck with me as I went into work that day. I was immediately met by my Operations manager, who told me that one of my deals had been rescinded. It was a deal I had closed over a month prior, with signed contracts and payments exchanged and the whole shabang. Well 3 weeks after I had closed this deal, the equipment sales rep for the region had gone into this doctor’s office, convinced him to cancel his contract with me, and upgrade his equipment. And because the equipment sales reps made ‘more money for the company than I did’ (a direct quote), they removed the money from my numbers and counted it as a lost opportunity. And the money that was taken out of my pocket was enough to ensure that I would miss this quarter’s quota. I was devastated and upset. I left for my lunch break a little early, drove to the Whole Foods parking lot, sat in my car and cried. I felt so hopeless in a job that was fundamentally taking care of all of my responsibilities but I was so completely miserable in. My lunch break ended, and before I left the parking lot, I called TJ. I vented to him about what happened, what I was feeling and how much I didn’t want to go back to work and he said “Why don’t you come meet me for lunch at my work?”. He had been working for Red Rock Balloon Adventures for the previous 3 years, and was their ground crew chief. He was working at their office in Uptown Sedona and I knew that if I left to go meet him, I would be late back from my lunch break and would possibly receive consequences. But, very uncharacteristically for me at the time, I said fuck it and I drove to Red Rock Balloons. It was there that I walked in and TJ was sitting with the owner of the company, Patricia. She heard me vent to him about everything that had happened and she wanted to talk to me about a possible job. She said she loved my personality, she was very picky about who she hired, but she loved TJ and trusted him, and she felt I would be a great pick for her company. She offered to match the salary I was receiving from Brava to work 3 days a week, 10 hours a day, at their Uptown office as an administrator taking phone reservations and managing other office duties. No more long weeks. No more days away from Madison. No more sales quotas to hit. And a plethora of free time to write. I was over the moon, and I thought to myself that had I gone back to Brava to avoid the taking a long lunch break, I would have missed this opportunity. I took the job immediately, and requested a sit down with the ‘bulldog’. 

Me helping dismember a balloon basket with Red Rock Balloons somewhere in Sedona

I explained to her the decision I had come to. I said that I am not happy here, and I am taking a non sales job that does not require the same time commitment, and will allow me more time to be at home with my daughter and more time to pursue my passion of writing. Her eyebrows narrowed, and she looked at me and asked “Are you fucking stupid?” “Do you have any idea what you are giving up? What kind of an opportunity this is?!” “You will never make this kind of money at your age ever again.” I kept trying to explain to her that I did not enjoy this job, and she deserved to have someone in the position who loved and valued this job enough to give their best effort every single day. She laughed at me and told me to get out of her office. 

It’s now been over 2 years since I had that conversation with the bulldog and one thing I have learned is I should have never expected her to understand where I was coming from or why I made the decision that I did. Because she, like so many people in our world, was money driven. And the path that I chose to walk down was not about money. It was not about success. It was not about outside validation. I had changed my perspective, and I was happiness driven. And that was when my true definition of success changed. 

The inside of the fabric of a 275 Cameron Balloon with Red Rock Balloons

I did not grow up wanting to be a reservationist in a hot air balloon office. I did not dream of working with hot air balloons. In fact, I hadn’t given them much thought at all until TJ started working for their company and fell in love. But that’s the point, my job is not my dream. HAPPINESS is my dream. Being surrounded by people who respect me is my dream. Having a child who feels loved and happy every day is my dream. Being able to find happiness in the darkest of times is my dream. Feeling surrounded by unconditional love is my dream. And attaining that dream has nothing to do with what I do to make a living. 

I have been with Red Rock Balloons longer than I have been with any other company in Sedona. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t days where I don’t like it. Or days where people get on my nerves. Or times where money is tighter than I would like. But I truly ENJOY what I do. And is part of that because I work with something as magical as hot air balloons? Sure. But the biggest part of it? I work with people who go above and beyond to let me know that I matter and that I am respected. I work for a company where we lift each other up instead of bringing each other down. I am surrounded by a happy atmosphere, and you can find this anywhere. Maybe you’ll find it flipping burgers at Burger King, or selling books at Barnes N Nobles. Maybe you’ll find it waiting tables at a breakfast house, or chasing hot air balloons and helping them land at sunrise every day. 

I work for a company that allows me to put my happiness and well being first, and that first and foremost should be your dream! To be loved, to be respected, to be happy. The moments camping under the stars with my family, or snuggled up on our living room floor watching a movie, or mornings meditating on my front porch with the breeze flowing through my hair and the smell of coffee gliding up into my nostrils, or sitting here writing this blog post for you all, these are the moments that truly fill me with joy. And that is what life is all about. I no longer live my life seeking validation for my value from other people. I love myself, and I value myself, and that alone is all the validation I need. So go, LIVE YOUR HAPPINESS, whatever that may be for you. Stop shaming yourself for demanding basic things like respect and boundaries. And fuck what anyone else has to say about it.

“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.” - Albus Dumbledore