The Most Influential Book I Read in 2023 is ‘The Success Myth’ by Emma Gannon
Reading 'The Success Myth' helped inspire major changes - why I'm stepping down from some of my long-time editing gigs and reevaluating what I want my career to be in my late forties and beyond
While the year isn’t technically over yet, I feel safe in saying that The Success Myth: Letting Go of Having It All by Emma Gannon is the book that had the biggest impact on me in 2023. I had been reading her Substack
(which I highly recommend!) and deeply related to her feelings of burnout and overwhelm, of a career that seemed wonderful but wasn’t quite all it was stacked up to be. So I ordered the book from the UK back in May and brought it with me on a trip to Portland, Oregon.I remember feeling so grateful to have someone articulating these ideas and that they started to open my mind to the fact that I didn’t have to work the way I’d been doing for the last two decades, trying to add on more and more and more to reach some hazy goal I couldn’t even articulate beyond “earn as much as possible in case it all disappears.”
My approach to my work has been clouded from day one by debt; when I entered the workforce, I was staggered with about $150,000 in student loans, and I compounded that with credit card debt. I spent a long time climbing out from under that debt but even once I’d paid it off and was more financially comfortable, I never paused to ask myself what I really wanted to be doing because I assumed I was doing it.
For a long time, I dreamed of being my own boss, and then when I did after my magazine job layoff in 2011, I was under the impression that I pretty much had to say yes to everything, and if there was ever a lull, I had to chase and pitch and look for work. Even my leisure time bled into work because I was often either thinking about (or more likely worrying about) deadlines or going over my to-do list in my head or thinking, “Could I turn this TV show/book/personal experience into fodder for writing?”
I made a list of all my income streams and at one point there were 11, which is great for diversification, but when they were all actively happening at the same time, it left me with little space to just be me, outside of work.
So reading The Success Myth, which tackles various myths about the meaning of success, as well as productivity, happiness, ambition, money, self-worth, identity, and more, was so welcome. There’s been a growing recognition in our culture about the fact that while we can be accessible 24/7 thanks to email and cell phones, there are deep downsides to that accessibility, and the issue doesn’t only happen from one direction, from employer to employee. Especially for those who are self-employed, we are often the ones overworking ourselves, erasing boundaries between work and leisure, whether because we think we have to or we just get used to hoping online “for a few minutes’ that can turn into hours.
With The Success Myth on my mind, I made some major changes this year and am looking ahead to 2024 regarding how to make more of them. I decided to step down from editing erotica anthologies for a while. I’ve loved working with hundreds of authors over the years, but I also want to reclaim some of my time and emotional energy. I have other projects I want to tackle, and ideas I want to explore, that the time spent editing erotica anthologies doesn’t allow for. I have also felt increasingly uncomfortable with having sending rejection letters be such a regular part of my work routine. While I don’t love receiving them as a writer, I’d rather receive than send them, and now I’ll get to do that.
What I’ve been doing has increasingly reminded me of when I was a teenager playing in competitive chess tournaments, obsessed with how many trophies I had won. I would actually sit in homeroom and mentally count them, even though, in retrospect, it really didn’t matter. I think maybe I have one around somewhere. It’s not that winning trophies, or editing anthologies, or any specific award or accolade are problematic, but rather whether the motivation for doing them makes sense.
Over the course of 2023, I’ve stepped back from a lot of things I assumed were essential, including most social media postings. For my own sanity and due to other obligations, I’ve had to be a lot more careful and protective of my time. Something Gannon talks about in The Success Myth is that success means different things to different people, and can look different to each of us at different times in our lives, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Our needs and priorities change, our visions for our best selves evolve.
There’s a lot of guilt that comes up for me in stepping back from tasks I’ve done as a matter of course for the last decade or more. Gannon writes, “I’ve realized a lot of my ambition, my ‘drive’ and my determination stemmed from fear.” That’s exactly the same for me when I think about scaling back. I’m afraid that I’ll earn less money and, despite my partner’s insistence this isn’t the case, that this will make me less worthy in his eyes, less of a full contributor to our household, even though I will still make enough to pay my share of the bills and save, just not save as much. Plus, it’s possible other gigs will come along that will replace the ones I’m stepping back from.
I’m also adjusting my notion of how I want to live my life and spend my time, especially my mental energy. I want to read more for fun, not because I’m pitching an interview with an author. I have a half-baked notion for a podcast but want to do it because I enjoy talking to people, not because it’s something I hope to monetize. I’m debating what the future of
will be, because even though I’m very proud of every essay I’ve published there, it hasn’t done as well as I was hoping it would, and I don’t want to just do it for the sake of doing it.That’s at the core of all the things I’m thinking about regarding how I want to spend the second half of my life: is it serving me in some valuable way, or am I just doing it because I’ve been doing it. In the chapter “The Arrival Myth,” Gannon asks this question: “How much is your current version of success costing you?”
For me, prior to the shifts I’ve had to make this year due to personal issues beyond my control, the cost was that my time hardly ever felt like my own. Even on that vacation in Portland which was a wonderful opportunity to see family I rarely get to see, I was working in ways that weren’t healthy, staying up late into the night and not letting myself be truly off the clock.
So now I’m trying to detach myself from thinking of myself solely in terms of my job(s) or my income or my achievements and more about showing up for the people I care about, being a good girlfriend and daughter and granddaughter and cousin and friend. I can’t always be all of those things and sometimes one dominates more than others. For the past few months, my personal mantras has been “I’m doing my best,” which is not always easy for me to judge.
Part of the problem when it comes to creative careers and “doing our best,” though, is that there are an infinite number of ways we can approach our careers and while we can get advice and input from others, ultimately, we have to decide what we want that career to look like and what we’re striving for. Right now, I’m not sure of my answer. It may be doing work that I can shut off at the end of the day, rather than the endless pursuit of new bylines and projects and goals and achievements. I used to think that wasn’t good enough, but at almost 50, I’m leaning in to other types of priorities, other things I want to feel good about when I lie down to sleep each night.
I don’t know exactly what my next career steps will look like, but I’m glad to be asking the questions. I think it can behoove all of us to periodically ask similar ones, especially if, like me, you’ve been feeling stuck, or in a rut, or like you’re doing tasks rotely without any true passion to back them up. If you want guidance in asking those questions and perspectives of people who’ve also faced them, I highly recommend The Success Myth.
Have any of you gone through a similar journey in terms of your career or personal life? What changes did you make to ensure your days aligned with your values and needs?
Same, girl, same. Thanks for writing this as Emma's book completely changed my life and how I'm approaching my 2024 career.
Love this! The phrase “How much is your current version of success costing you?” - That’s a powerful thought.