Success

I've been thinking a lot lately about success and what makes one person more successful than another. There are several women I know that are my age or younger who have already surpassed me in terms of career success. On the one hand, this makes me a little envious. How have they already achieved so much when I feel I still have so much left to learn? On the other (more rational) hand, I realize that they probably had a clearer vision of what they wanted to be when they grew up.

When I went to college, I intended to become a psychologist. I soon realized, however, that while I enjoyed my psychology classes, I didn't have enough passion for it to justify pursuing it through graduate school. So I turned to creative writing, since that was the only other thing I could see myself doing at the time. By my senior year, I decided I wanted to write for a living, be it for magazines, newspapers, whatever. And for the most part that is what I have done since I graduated, beginning with piddly freelance assignments, working my way up to writing full time.

Only recently has public relations come on my radar, partly because of my job and partly because I joined the Florida Public Relations Association. Both of these experiences have awakened a new passion in me and opened up career paths I had never considered before.

So I suppose it is no wonder I feel like I am playing catch up to other women my age who knew from college that they wanted to work in PR. And I'm starting to realize I shouldn't beat myself up about it. So what? Who cares what age I am when I become a director? The idea is to take keep learning, keep striving to reach my goals. I'll get there one day.

What do you think? Have you ever felt like you weren't enough of a success? What have you done to attain your goals?