Fresh Take: Amil Niazi, LIFE AFTER AMBITION

0:00This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus. Powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. Helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com. Hello and welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Margaret and today I am talking to Emile Niazi about her new book, Life After Ambition. Emile is a writer and producer.

0:41She writes the cut series on parenting, The Hard Part, and covers work and motherhood and how the two intersect. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. Welcome, Emile. Thanks for having me. So your book starts with a conversation with your son where he says, I don't want to just grow up, do work, and then die. And first of all, same to your son. Talk about that as the beginning of your book and what that brought up for you and why that story kind of starts this book off. I mean, I still very acutely remember that conversation. one because I think it's that perfect combination of like hilarious because you have the experience of knowing what a sort of comically tragic thing that is to say right yep how both true and also of course not true it is but also because at the same time that I was sort of like laughing inside I obviously didn't laugh at him but it also made me very sad because I just really I'm always trying to be conscious of what I'm projecting to my kids about all of these things, about work, about parenting, about what it is to be a person in the world.

1:59And I just was hoping that in my own internal and personal battle for meaning in my work, that I wasn't accidentally conveying that work is misery and that adulthood is just, you know, kind of a miserable trudge up the hill until you die. But at the same time, like you said, same, obviously, I think we all struggle with that. And so for him to like almost encapsulate what so many people are feeling right now about capitalism and work and career and ambition and all those things for him to like sum it up so perfectly, I was just like, wow, I think I'm going to probably remember this for a long time.

2:38And I wanted to start it there because I think he really did sum it up perfectly well. And I think that even at 40, at 50, hopefully not at 60, but you never know. I think so, so deep into whatever adulthood looks like, we are struggling to make work fun and to make it engaging and to not have to just do work and die. Right. So in a story about many things, but particularly about what my relationship to work looks like, I just thought from the mouths of babes, like I couldn't have said it better. So. Exactly. I was recently talking to my son. And it's interesting, when your kids are little, you're really thinking about the day-to-day so much and just like, okay, getting them through every day.

3:27And he said to me, he loves animals. And he's like, I love animals and I just want to work with animals. But I really want to be rich. I want to have things, you know? And he's just at an age where he's trying to figure out, like, do I want to be happy and do what I love? Or do I want to have the things I want to have? And it's funny, like that dynamic. And I didn't have an answer, but it also gave me an idea. And I was reflecting on it, reading this book that I sometimes think about what we're teaching about school and how to interact and whatever is going on at school. But we're also really modeling what does life look like?

4:07You know, and I think that he's watching us make choices and he might be thinking a little bit like, hmm, they don't have nice things, but they seem happy doing what they're doing. and I'm going to have to make a choice at some point about which of those paths I choose, which is not true, as you said about your own son. But it is also there's some truth to it, like figuring out how to pursue your life in a way that satisfies your ambition, but also makes a living. And it seems to get more complicated every year. And also like satisfies your ambition. It's like, well, what is your ambition? Is it to be content with the things that you have?

4:50Is it to be satisfied and happy and engaged? Or is it to have nice things? And as many of us well know, those two things are not the same. Does it feel nice to have nice things? Of course it does. But have I been much happier when I've been able to do work that I enjoy and that brings me meaning and pay the bills? And when I want to buy a nice bottle of wine, I can buy a nice bottle of wine. But like that's lately my bar is like, can I have one nice thing as opposed to can I have a never ending cycle of nice things? Or can I buy whatever I want, whenever I want. I don't think that that's ever brought anyone true contentment.

5:33So let's talk about this word ambition. We always like to start by kind of defining the issue. So the book is obviously about ambition and it's the role that it's played very specifically in your life. So talk about the word ambition and what it means to you. It definitely goes through an evolution, you know, throughout my life. I think when I was a kid, ambition was obviously, you know, a child's understanding of it, which was this like very rom-com definition of ambition, which is like this beautiful 20-something who leaves her small town and leaves her small family behind and goes to the big city to find herself and to really just like thrive in the world.

6:16That's how I pictured it when I was a young girl. The devil wears Prada version, kind of like you're going to go and make it in the big town. Exactly. I'm going to go and make it in the big town. And I was very well and willing to sacrifice pretty much anything in my life to get it. And I was like, well, I don't have much to sacrifice anyway, so who cares? But that definition of ambition didn't really alter much as I became an actual thinking adult, because I don't know that I ever had many models, you know, speaking of modeling things like of anything different. As far as the narrative for me from childhood to well into adulthood, it was really like ambition was about sacrifice.

7:01It was about material good. And there was no end point, right? It was never like achieve until X and then you'll be happy. It was the finish line. There's no finish line. There's always more. And it's healthy to always want more. And it's healthy to never have enough. And I just took that very, very far into my life. And every time I wanted to stop, every time I was like, well, surely this is like good enough. I just didn't really have anywhere to look to be able to say, well, that person was ambitious and now they're not. So, you know, can I take a pause? even in becoming a mother, I never felt like I could stop.

7:41In fact, I felt I had to work even harder because I grew up sort of sandwiched between generations who were like, women should have it all and anything less is a failure on in your own feminism. And then this new trad wife sort of like toxic mentality. I'm, you know, millennials are kind of right in between those two. Right. Now all those women from the big city are going home for their Hallmark holiday and falling in love with a lumberjack, right? It's like, oh, we're back. It's just we're back. Yes, exactly. Raising chickens and like, you know. Yes. Anyway, so that was my definition of ambition for a very long time.

8:16And so when I talk about life after ambition, I'm really talking about that type of a superficial, bottomless pit of searching. And then everything after that is what I'm defining for myself. And you talk about this being tied to the experience of your parents being immigrants and there's this beautiful scene where you write about this building that you're growing up in and these friends and the different experiences that they're having with their own family and you say talking about a neighbor hannah my parents weren't as strict with me as hannah's were with her but they shared a similar immigrant refrain that their sacrifices of home and family should spur us in a kind of raw desire to succeed and better ourselves and that starting point that you talk about is familiar to a lot of people that we're at once trying to live our parents idea of whether the sacrifices that they made for us were worthwhile because of the way we turned out.

9:16And you say in a really funny way that like that means getting a busy child job, like being a lawyer, a doctor, an account, like something that is a recognizable job and balancing that with our own ambition and making some sort of delineation between, I guess, what is it that we really want? Are we pursuing something that our parents thought was a good idea or are we pursuing something that is actually our own ambition? Yeah. And I think it's really difficult. I think there's people who still don't know which side of it that they're on. And I think that for me, it took a lot to figure out why I was pursuing so many of the things that I was pursuing.

9:59And even when I thought that I was doing, you know, journalism for myself, I realized what I really wanted was to be writing in a very different style, but that felt too scary. That felt too far from what my parents wanted for me, even though I thought I had foregone those desires. Right. Those things go deep. They do run very, very deep. And so another reason to bring it back to the beginning of the book is that I wanted to start with my kids is because I'm also really trying to untangle my understanding of these things, not just for myself, but for them so that they, I know we all have to figure it out for ourselves, but I just want them to have a clearer path to their own desires, hopefully not complicated by my own desires for them.

10:52We talk about that so much on the podcast and listeners write about it. The idea of when you have a child, it really causes a reckoning with how you were raised in a way that you might not have thought about as much. And I think people feel very intimidated and challenged by the idea of, can I do this differently than my parents did it? and sometimes we swing too far to the other side and that those patterns are harder to break than we think they are. Yeah, for sure they are. But I also think if you're asking that question, then you're probably already doing a better job. Maybe then, there you go.

11:31We say that all the time. If you're listening to this podcast, you're already doing it. Exactly. Like I think to even say, I want to be different, I want to break this pattern, the recognition of it is a healthy step. And there are times when I know I want to be better, but it's almost like an animal instinct takes over and I'm saying or doing something that I recognize as being a pattern from my childhood. But if I stop and I apologize and I say, you know what, guys, I'm sorry that I don't even know where that came from, which is a lie. Of course, I know exactly where it came from, but I know exactly what pocket I pulled that out of.

12:08But but I do think apologizing is such a powerful tool. and I use it all the time. And my parents pretty much never apologized to me as a kid when I think it mattered the most. So that's one of the ways that I'm breaking the pattern is to just say sorry. Breaking the cycle. Yeah. I am talking to Emile Niazi and her book is Life After Ambition and we'll be right back. For some of us, tax season is one of the only times that we look at our finances fully. And And once it's over, well, that was terrible. And it is completely understandable not to want to think about it for another whole year. But using Monarch and being intentional with your finances in an ongoing way helps you see where your money is going and how you can put your refund to best use.

12:56We are here to tell you, simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50 percent off your Monarch subscription with code fresh. As you know, my husband and I are preparing to send, yes, three kids off to college. And I cannot tell you how helpful Monarch has been in showing us our full financial picture, helping us to track our spending and reach important savings milestones.

13:38Our weekly meeting, Amy, it's now run by Monarch. Love it. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use code FRESH at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50 % off at Monarch.com, code FRESH. Fun fact, everyone, tea is the oldest drink in the world, I mean, besides water, and that's why Peak Tea's green and black Pu-erh tea duo provides truly old-school metabolic support. Rich and naturally occurring polyphenols and gentle probiotics, Green Pu-erh is deeply nourishing and supports immune health and cellular renewal, helping you feel resilient and energized.

14:24Naturally fermented with probiotics and black tea flavanols, black Pu-erh supports digestive balance and microbiome diversity, helping your system feel lighter and more efficient. These two teas work together for smoother digestion, reduced bloating, and more sustained energy throughout the day. I have been trying these peak Pu-erh teas in rotation, and I'll definitely feel a difference in both my digestion and my energy levels. Commit to metabolic health, unlock 20 % off and establish your powerful foundation for sustained wellbeing at peaklife.com slash fresh. That's P-I-Q-U-E life.com slash fresh.

15:06These days, Hellions, I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. That's why I love Quince. They make high-quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100 % European linen, 100 % silk, and organic cotton poplin. Their lightweight cotton cashmere sweaters are perfect for the changing seasons. I love my Quince short-sleeve cashmere crew neck so much, I got it in two more colors. Dress them up, dress them down, I'm out the door. Quince works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. You're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores, just quality clothing.

15:42Right now, go to quince.com slash fresh for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com slash fresh for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash fresh. So I think you capture so well in this book. I'm a Gen Xer, so I'm a little bit ahead of you in the story. But back in our parents' day, many of our parents got a job at 21 or maybe even earlier, and they just worked at that job for 40 years and they got retirement and that's kind of how it went.

16:28You have a, you know, you're working at the Gap, you're dressed as a toothbrush at some point, like this kind of gig economy that our generation and the generations below us are in. How does that gig economy and the difficulty of finding work, how does that play in with ambition, do you think, in terms of like you're trying to find a path, but the path necessitates taking kind of all these different paths. I've never in my life as a worker been a part of an economy that is stable and predictable. I've never been part of an industry that is stable and predictable. The media industry crumbling the entire time that I was witnessing it, whether through the many evolutions that television took or the internet.

17:21But certainly when I was participating in it, it was crumbling pretty much immediately. Any sort of creative ambitions felt very far away because of the upheaval of, like I said, all of media. Journalism destroyed. But the financial crash in 2008, that occurred just as people my age were entering into our first serious jobs. You know, so all I know is a gig economy. All I know is patchwork ways of paying rent and putting together a resume. Hustle culture is the world that I was born into. It's the world that we created for ourselves. The gig economy is how millennials survived. And so it's just all I've known.

18:11I think people who I hate this word, but it made me very resilient. I think made us as a generation very resilient because we had no choice but to figure it out, to have three jobs instead of the one that our parents or the generation above us would have had. Millennials, though, also turned that into something that was desirous, right? It was like, well, we don't want to be stuck in one job forever. That seems boring. We want to be able to jump from job to job, to have many jobs, to have a side hustle that is creative while we pair. But, you know, we, we turned that into something glamorous because we sort of had to tell ourselves that fiction.

18:51Whereas now Gen Z dreams of having one job until they die, right? They're like, that's the dream. So I think you always sort of make the best of your circumstance, but you also end up covetous of the thing that you were never able to grasp. Yeah, I think that's right. I have an aunt who, she was a writer and wrote two books, but her dream was to be a mom. And she talked about, and she wrote about motherhood and being a stay-at-home mom. And she would say, in some ways, it's so much harder for you all because you have every choice in the world. I could be a mom, a nurse, or a teacher, basically.

19:31I don't want to go back to the days where women didn't have any options. but the idea of the story of you can do and be anything and you should, and you should be self-actualized on six different levels and therefore being one thing is not satisfying to anybody. And I think there is a tremendous amount of pressure and you capture this in the book. It's kind of an unfillable hole, I feel like, for women of the coming generations in terms of like you can't sit down and rest. There's always something to be done. Yeah, because it's not the you could do anything that's scary. It's that you should do everything that is ultimately crippling, right?

20:13That's right. It's not if you want to be a stay at home mom, do that. If you want to work at a Fortune 500, do that. It's the idea that you should do both of those things at once and only be satisfied if you are running at max speed, that I think is what many people are now fighting back against. It was never feasible to have it all and do it all. And we're only just now trying to unpack why we thought it was possible in the first place and to figure out now what is better for us at both individually and as a society. Yeah. And you talk about the idea of meritocracy, which, you know, I think that that was very much part of my childhood, that good people who work hard go places, right?

21:05That there is a formula that you can fit all the pieces in. And when you get all the pieces together, that leads to success. And that so many of us are finding that that is not actually how it works. Like, I don't even know if there's still a mythical lawyer doctor path, where if you make this series of choices, it all turns out okay. Certainly for myself as a writer and an actress and an artist, that was not ever available to me. But I think it's interesting how you capture the idea of the meritocracy is also predicated on who is deciding what merit is. Like the way that you present yourself at jobs and talk a little bit about your experience with that in terms of finding yourself in different jobs where you were being judged, maybe not on the right merits?

21:54Yeah. First of all, this idea of meritocracy is a very clever lie because if the myth is that if you work hard enough and you make the right choices and you do the right things, that you'll find success. But if you fail at that, it's a personal failing as opposed to an institutional failing so that we are constantly telling people, well, you just weren't good enough or you just didn't make the right choices. Or if you just hadn't done that, maybe then you would have had that job or you would have been able to buy that house. So it forever puts the burden on us as individuals as opposed to on the institutions and the people in power that keep us locked out of all of those things.

22:32And so I did believe it for a time. And then I started to see that I was competing against people who had no student debt, whose parents were paying for their rent and their phone bill and all of these things. And so they were able to make choices I was never able to make. And so how could we then be up for the same things? You know, just we're not running the same race, but I was being told we were. And so I'm really relieved now that for most people, that myth is exactly that. It's just like a series of bedtime stories that, you know, we tell each other. And for me, it's like I had actually worked really hard and I had gotten into places that someone like me probably should have been locked out of.

23:17Working a good journalism job with a pension, working alongside people who went to the right schools. But even then, it was like, okay, so you've found a way to be here professionally, but are you making the right personal choices. You know, are you the right type of woman? As you mentioned, I was doing well at work and in a staff job and in a place where that's a very hard thing to come by. And, and I had a very destructive relationship. And when I finally got the courage to tell my boss, you know, why I had to miss work, she asked me a question that I couldn't believe another woman was asking me.

23:56And when she asked me if I'd done the right thing, it was just like, oh, that was my first real understanding that for some people, you'll never be good enough. You'll never be the right type of person. And so why play that game? Play a different game. Yeah. You say ambition becomes a funny thing when it's blunted by inequality or used against you. And I think this is something that women especially run into in the workplace is that you're playing a game that you don't understand the rules to and you're not seeing a lot of the pieces from work but also I think in like the tiktok world of the chalkboard laundry room where everybody is dressed perfectly you're not seeing the piece where that person is independently wealthy which good for them if they're independently wealthy but the ambition to be part of lifestyles that you are so far behind in reaching those lifestyles and that people are not really revealing to you their biases or their advantages, it makes the competition very mismatched.

25:09Yes, definitely. And I think we're just starting to have that part of the conversation. We were able to admit that, okay, maybe meritocracy as presented is not true, but then we're in this new phase of it where it's like okay so in the influencer space any stay-at-home mom can turn on her phone and make a living from home and what we're not saying is who's succeeding at even that and what extra help do they have what's their partner doing in the background and there's just so many spaces where the inequality is best hidden because it again it keeps that failure on the individual rather than on the system.

25:54I want to talk more about this idea of what's hidden. I'm talking to Emile Niazi. Her book is Life After Ambition, and we'll be right back. If you want to wake up with skin that looks even better than before you went to bed, reach for Osea Skin Care. I mean seconded. Osea's clinically tested formulas are designed to deliver visible results, and with a full lineup of body care products, they have something for everyone. Osea's Anti-Aging Body Balm is a liquid silk body balm that combines the lasting hydration of a lotion with the firming power of a serum, leaving skin smoother, firmer, and beautifully supple.

26:33I apply the Anti-Aging Body Balm right before bed. I've been doing it for about a month. It makes my skin feel silky soft. It's really great. And I have to say, my skin definitely looks and feels smoother and more hydrated. Get a spring-worthy glow with clean, clinically tested skincare from Osea. And right now we have a special discount just for our listeners. Get 10 % off your first order site-wide with code FRESH at OseaMalibu.com. That's 10 % off your first order with code FRESH at, I'm going to spell it, O-S-E-A-M-A-L-I-B-U. OseaMalibu.com. Nutrafol supports hair health from within, working over time to deliver results you can see and feel.

27:22So your hair becomes something you enjoy, not something you stress about. Okay, take it from me. Hair loss is normal as you age, but Nutrafol helps. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. You can order Nutrafol online, no prescription needed, with automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track. Plus, with a Nutrafol subscription, you can save up to 20 % and get added perks to support your hair health journey. Let your hair be one less thing to worry about.

27:57See visibly thicker, stronger, faster-growing hair in three to six months with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners$10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit Nutrafol.com and enter promo code laughing. That's Nutrafol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com, promo code laughing. So this idea of keeping your kind of personal life and your work life separate, again, I think very profound, especially for working moms, the idea of we can't see anything real about your life or it undercuts you at work. And you write very movingly in the book about surviving an assault that was extremely violent and disruptive while you were at work.

28:53And this idea that you can't integrate basically your life that is actually going on and your work life without being somehow seen as bringing something that's not desirable or not being the right kind of ambitious. Talk about that. When you are traditionally locked out of a space, like all women were for so long, you really are trying to craft yourself into as good and as palatable of a person as possible so that there are no opportunities for them to smell weakness. And, you know, you want to be judged on your work. You don't want to be judged on anything else, although we always are being judged on these other, you know, who can stay for after work drinks or who, you know, whatever.

29:41But that is something that I was trying to still do. And I was very aware, even as this horrible thing was happening to me, that I still had to keep my job and I still wanted to keep my job. But how could I make a little bit of space for my bosses to know what was going on so that I, you know, I'm literally physically feeling from this thing. How do I explain that in a way that will still keep me on the same even playing field as my co-workers? And I think one of the things that I was told about workplaces, certainly, you know, mid-career was like, this was supposed to be a family and you're supposed to, you know, We're all a family.