Has my high point already become my backstory?

Here’s an existential crisis wrapped in a humblebrag: I have achieved all my life goals. You might think that this would render me unable to complain, but like any real high achiever, I still find a way.

I have written two and half mostly well-received books; spent a year writing a column for a major newspaper; purchased property, no assistance from the bank of mum and dad required; kept my dog alive for 10 years; successfully avoided more bad relationships with milquetoast men than I ever knew was possible; and been fired by my psychiatrist for being “too stable” for him to justify keeping me on as a patient (please do not forward him this piece, I am already spending my therapy budget on patisserie).

A renaissance woman. A wunderkind. A superstar! So why is dread growing in the space where contentment is supposed to live?

I wonder if this is how Meryl Streep feels. We’re contemporaries, after all. Does she, like me, sit in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in the outer north and feel just a brush of dopamine when someone tells her that she’s brilliant anymore? Does Malala feel like she’s not doing enough, either?

When you’re a child, all anyone asks is what you want to be when you grow up. From behind your school desk, while your teacher is trying to teach you about branches of government, you prop your cheek on your fist and get swallowed into a daydream. You don’t know it yet, but the fantasy you check in on most often is about to set the course for the rest of your life. Subconsciously, you sand down the edges of who you are, shaping yourself into who you could be. You set a goal and keep to it like an oath.

Maybe you wanted to start a business, or have a big family. Maybe you wanted to run an ultra-marathon, if you’re insane. Maybe you just wanted to get out of your hometown. You hope, work, struggle, strive toward the finish line. The longer it eludes you, the harder you pursue it. A sunk-cost fallacy, because your dream has become your identity, and if you let it go, you might just fizzle away. Anyway, you’re sure that all your little unhappinesses would evaporate if you just ticked off this one tiny thing.

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And then by some miracle, you do! Congratulations! You’re the wunderkind, the superstar. But just as you’re acclimatising to your euphoria bubble, some well-intentioned person with a sewing needle asks the question that ruins everything: “What’s next?”

Pop! Suddenly, that life-changing achievement is just something that happened yesterday. Everything is the same, except now you have your name on a book, or a medal on your mantle, or the world’s cutest baby on your hip. What was once your high point is now just backstory.