The Questions I'm Finally Asking (And Why Hope Looks Different Now)

I grew up consuming media about the success of others like it was oxygen. The magazines, the documentaries, the TED talks about people who'd "made it." I absorbed all of it with the kind of fervor usually reserved for religious conversion. There was Gary Vaynerchuk screaming about hustle. There were founders who sold companies before thirty. There were the polished LinkedIn posts about grinding, about sacrifice, about becoming the person you're meant to be.

And I bought it. Completely.

Not in a cynical, strategic way, but with genuine belief. I wanted to be that person. The one with the origin story, the one who figured it out, the one who mattered. It lit something in me, this idea that if I just worked hard enough, optimized enough, networked enough, I'd eventually arrive at some destination where I'd finally feel like I'd done it right.

Spoiler: that fire burned through a lot before I realized it wasn't actually warming anything.

The mistakes came in waves. Some were small. Taking jobs that looked good on paper but hollowed me out. Others were bigger. Relationships I neglected, principles I bent, a relentless internal monologue that treated rest like failure. I kept chasing the feeling I thought achievement would bring, and each time I got close to something that resembled "success," the satisfaction lasted about as long as good produce.

This past year broke something in me. Or maybe it finally broke something open. Either way, I'm standing in the wreckage of what I thought my life was supposed to look like, and for the first time, I'm not immediately trying to rebuild the same structure.

I'm asking different questions now.

Where I used to ask, "How do I get ahead?" I'm asking, "What actually feels like living?" Where I used to ask, "What will this achieve?" I'm asking, "Does this reflect who I want to be?" The old questions were all about acquisition and advancement. The new ones are slower, messier, harder to measure.

"Am I being honest, or am I being impressive?" has become a personal checkpoint I didn't know I needed. So much of what I did was performative—not maliciously, but because I'd internalized that mattering meant being seen. I conflated visibility with value. Now I'm learning to notice the difference between doing something because it's meaningful and doing it because it makes a good story.

"Who benefits from my ambition?" is another question I wish I'd asked sooner. For years, my drive was almost entirely self-referential. I wasn't trying to help anyone; I was trying to become someone. And look, ambition isn't inherently selfish—but mine was. It was a closed loop. The realization that my energy could actually contribute something beyond my own résumé has been both humbling and liberating.

There's also this: "What if I'm already enough?" It's the kind of question that would've made me cringe a few years ago. It sounded like settling, like something people say when they've given up. But sitting with it now, I realize it's not about lowering standards—it's about questioning whether the standard I've been holding myself to was ever actually mine. Turns out, a lot of what I thought I wanted was just an elaborate game of Simon Says with people I didn't even know.

The thing about asking different questions is that you get different answers. And different answers require different actions. Which brings me to impact.

I used to think impact meant scale. Big wins, wide reach, undeniable proof that I'd left a mark. Now I think impact might just be showing up with integrity. It might be the conversation that shifts someone's thinking. It might be creating something honest enough that people recognize themselves in it.

What I want to build now isn't impressive—it's useful. I want to make things that help people feel less alone in their confusion, their struggles, their quiet rebellions against the narratives that don't fit. I spent so long trying to fit a mold that I know intimately what it costs. If there's any value in what I've been through, it's that I can talk about it in a way that might save someone else a few years of chasing shadows.

I'm not interested in inspiring people anymore. I'm interested in being honest with them.

And here's where I land on hope: I'm choosing it, but not because everything's fine or because I've figured it out. I'm choosing it because the alternative—cynicism, resignation, the belief that all that striving was just wasted time—doesn't actually serve me or anyone else.

Hope, the way I understand it now, isn't about optimism. It's not the belief that things will work out. It's the decision to keep building even when you're not sure what you're building toward. It's trusting that asking better questions will eventually lead somewhere worth going, even if you can't see the destination yet.

Despair would be easier, honestly. It would require less vulnerability, less risk of being wrong again. But I've spent enough time optimizing for comfort disguised as ambition. What I'm after now is something closer to truth, even if it's uncomfortable. Especially if it's uncomfortable.

So no, I don't have it figured out. I'm not writing this from the other side of struggle with a neat bow on top. I'm in it, recalibrating, relearning what it means to want things for the right reasons. But I'm here, asking different questions, building toward a different kind of impact, and choosing hope not because it's easy, but because it's the only thing that still feels like motion.

And motion, I'm learning, matters more than the destination ever did.