Still hungry
From ravenous ambition to magnetic becoming
I’ve been bitterly softening into someone who can welcome the grief of getting older without immediately succumbing to the urgency it awakens.
I’ve always been in a rush. Out of the house I was born into, back from the grocery store faster, towards a graduation. Whenever I reminisce, my instinct is never to reflect on what’s been built — it’s to inventory what hasn’t. The mountain I haven’t scaled. The elusive, goddess-like version of myself I still haven’t become (Perfect Alexis). I tend to stop there, tally the distance between me and flawlessness, and use that as fuel for the next thing. Forward motion has always felt safer than looking back.
That’s why the sudden fixation on 2016 caught me off guard — I surprisingly loved that time. Now if it were a 2014 deep dive (my awkward era), I wouldn’t have so gleefully scrolled through my old pictures, 500+ finsta posts, or my immaculate Tumblr blog. But even a gorgeous Instagram grid couldn’t stop my 27-year-old ego from zooming in on the sobering magnitude of a decade between me and the girl obsessed with NYX matte lip liner. Youth — Perfect Alexis reminds me — is fleeting. You have got to get your shit together !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, I journaled the morning after the trend peaked.
At the time, I was somehow convinced I was the coolest girl alive — I’d just beaten 99% of society’s odds to get into Northwestern early decision and started wearing contacts — even though I was deeply lonely. I’ve always cringed a little at my high school self, mostly because she didn’t know so many things I now feel embarrassed not to have known earlier. Perfect Alexis is omniscient, of course.
Getting into Northwestern felt miraculous for a girl like me. It was the first moment I truly believed I might make it out of chaos and poverty. That belief — fragile but electric — became something I ran with for the next decade. And yet, looking around at 17, I still didn’t feel like anything was meaningful enough to make the hard part worth it. Surprisingly, that’s what makes me feel so close to that version of myself: we’re both desperately hungry to be seen.
Ambition is just another word for hungry, and I was ravenous. I’d get that meaning if I just kept hustling for it. It became a habit to pounce on every opportunity that would take me somewhere else. That hunger took me on an extraordinary journey through five cities, two businesses, countless jobs and apartments, and it brought me here. And, I’m pretty happy, here. At least this week ;)
But over the past ten years, I’ve also done a remarkable job of accumulating logic for why I’m not good enough — instead of collecting proof that I’ve simply been remembering the woman I desired to be.
Scrolling through my Tumblr (I wish we still had Polyvore — I was going ham on there, too!!!!!), I giggled at how similar my 17-year-old aesthetic was to the Pinterest boards that soothe me today. With a chip on her shoulder and the promise of a new environment at college, Young Alexis was crafting her identity from scratch. She believed in herself intrinsically, without external evidence. She didn’t need permission, but when she got it, she was unstoppable.
She craved structure, though, and she couldn’t resist all the external benchmarks — the numbers, the timelines, the validation. The gap between Perfect Alexis and me remained just loud enough to keep me moving forward without requiring me to listen to myself. If I wasn’t perfect, who was I to direct this movie? Might as well let Societal Norms do that part!
But running from something is not how you arrive anywhere.
In preparation for my live Alignment Edit workshops kicking off this Sunday, I went back through my old journals to see what was occupying my mind exactly a year ago, in the wake of what felt like my entire world (yes, the one I’d built in survival mode) shattering. I wanted to understand what the depressed, aimless version of me actually needed to hear — so I could offer that clarity to the women walking into the room now.
I filled fifteen Mnemosyne B5 journals in twelve months. The early pages were raw and frantic — Will I ever heal? Why is this happening to me? — before slowly giving way to something steadier: months spent deliberately retraining my identity, teaching myself how to believe in my own creative authority.
The entries still looped, still spiraled. Every few weeks I’d return to the same declarations — I am powerful. I am deserving. — forgetting and remembering my worth in shorter and shorter increments.
And yet, even seeing the progress, I couldn’t help but feel a flicker of frustration that I hadn’t fully closed this worthiness wound once and for all — or earned the accolades I’d furiously prayed for on the page.
But I’ve done enough remembering to recognize the flaw in my judgment. The accolades, the being “done” or “finished,” wouldn’t fix me — because they aren’t me. They were tools that a younger version of me used to feel safe.
The real magic, your real ravenousness, is meant to be channeled toward creating. Creating isn’t running away from something; it’s stopping long enough to listen to what wants to come through you. The secret weapon is you. It’s not the sprint.
I know so many ambitious women who are here too. You’re driven, capable, intelligent — and inexplicably stalled. You’ve been running on something sharp and volatile, something rooted in frustration or anger you can’t fully explain. And when you can’t find logic for what you’re feeling, your entire worldview starts to crack. Because the only option left is to sit with it.
What no one tells you is that sitting with it isn’t failure. It’s the first step towards authorship.
The thing you’re avoiding — the grief, the discomfort, the quiet knowing — is what’s shaping your unique perception. It’s what informs your creativity, your taste, the particular life you want to build and projects you’re meant to bring to life. Our desires aren’t random. They’re data. They’re gifts!!!!
That’s why scrolling through my old Tumblr and journals felt so clarifying. The aesthetic I idolized then is strikingly similar to the world I’m living in now. The interests, the longings, the vision — all there, just no longer desperate to be validated by a number or resume bullet point.
Back then, I mistook pursuit for alignment, motion for meaning. Now I understand the paradox: what was keeping me stuck wasn’t a lack of effort. It was proximity without presence. I was running so close to what I thought I wanted that I never stopped to ask why I wanted it — or whether I just might have it already.
Stuckness is an invitation to slow down and remember. I knowwwww, slowing down feels unsafe when your fuel is frustration. I’ve found it to be magical when your fuel is self-trust.
My challenge since re-aligning my life has been remaining magnetic instead of frantic. Magnetism isn’t always passive, and it isn’t just mystical. It’s what happens when you allow yourself to be fully where you are — when you trust that what’s meant for you will recognize you without tumultuous pursuit.
And it’s working. I’ve transformed so much pain into seeds for a fabulous future. My ambition was not my blocker; my hunger was not a flaw. I simply learned to take action with intention, and I guess you could say it’s paying off, because you’re here :)
Who knew reflection could be so sweet? When you’re not looking for the flaws in your story, you can see that it’s a pretty good one and the path was there all along.
So, friends, the Alignment Edit workshop (and the accompanying podcast episodes) aren’t about shrinking your desire. It’s about redirecting the fuel. It’s about learning how to stop long enough to listen — so the life you’re building actually feels like yours.
If you’re ambitious, ravenous, and tired of outrunning yourself, this is your pause.
A moment to let the grief soften — to remember the girl who believed before she had proof, and to build the life she always knew was coming.
Hope to see you there <3 Sign up here.
xx
Alexis
this was such an incredible post, and it does a great job articulating the endless ambition and hunger for more