And then afterwards I had an emotional breakdown (Shel, what are you doing in life!!) followed by a revelation (Shel, you gotta start taking bold steps!)
OK OK, let me take a couple of steps back.
I am a very risk-averse person.
Here is a shameless silly selfie. Once upon a time back in junior high, I was a bold, bold blogger, with my page littered with selfies. Like, we're talking Kim-Kardashian-level selfie obsession (and I don't mean that in a bad way - I think Kim is absolutely gorgeous and may she be forever bestowed with endless selfie-opportunities!).
That was, until I started becoming more and more scared of taking risks. My senior year of high school, I decided I had to delete all my social media, especially after hearing horror stories of rescinded college admissions driven by incriminating FaceBook photos. For good measure, I also ended up applying to 20+ universities (...yes). Keep in mind that back in my day (and I'm feeling more and more like a dinosaur every time I say this), common app was still in its very nascent stages, so that meant literally 20+ separate applications. Which meant each one was very vanilla, with very bland, easily tweakable essays. I had one dream school in mind (and no, it's not Harvard LOL) and I think I had a pretty good shot. But I couldn't give my all because, well, I was spreading my time across 20 different applications. So I didn't get in.
In college, I spread myself thin taking classes in way too many disciplines and filling my extracurricular time with too many disparate activities. I wanted to double major - and also be premed - and also run 5 or 6 clubs - and also research - etc., etc., etc. This, obviously, was not great for my grade point average ... or sanity.
For my first job, I took what I perceived to be the "safest" entry-level job I could -- the most "generalist" one, despite being the lowest paying of all my offers by a pretty substantial spread. By a strange twist of luck, this actually turned out to be a pretty good decision. Because it got me to where I am today, working on investments and with some of the smartest people I could ever meet. BUT who's to say that I won't still have gotten here if I decided to go to a big consulting firm or direct investment fund?
The buck stops here. I won't live my life so hedged anymore. All my life, my fear of closing off possibilities (closing off college doors by not applying to a million, closing off career doors by taking too "specialized" of a job) has been at best, breakeven, and at worst, very limiting of my potential and achievements.
I have to be bold from now on. Aggressive. Vocal. Opinionated. Unhedged.
These were things that my manager (who is one of my greatest role models - someone I aspire to be in 5-10 years) have cited as things he wanted me to work on from a professional standpoint anyway. It would be the only way that I could rise to become a manager.
I had expected this.
What I didn't expect was the sudden connection I made between this feedback on my work and my own personal feedback on how I run my life. As, as I sat in his office, hearing his words and watching the hustle and bustle of Manhattan outside the window, it dawned on me that this meek, afraid, totally hedged, person who is afraid of making large investment recommendation or redemption decisions ... is the person I have been for over a decade, and the person that I no longer wanted to be.
No more hedging. There are some big career goals I want to reach. There are some big blogging, vlogging milestones I want to pass. And I'm going to go forward loudly and boldly to get what I want. Enveloping myself in the comfort of fall-back plans is no longer an option for me.
