Actually, I’m fine with not having it all

All through the ’90s and early aughts, any female character in any given medium followed just one arc: the struggle to “have it all”. No variation of this hero’s journey existed until Lena Dunham invented complex female characters in 2012 (oh my god, it’s a joke, relax), and even now, the trope persists.

For the most part, “it all” comprises a great job and a lovely partner, but it expands to include things like a solid found family of close friends, a massive but miraculously inexpensive apartment in a major city, perfect health, an athleisure model’s body and an expansive wardrobe, and later, when the push-pull of their romantic plotline has tied itself up, a kid or two, and perhaps a golden retriever.

Credit: Robin Cowcher

Carrie Bradshaw, Bridget Jones, Rachel Green and Monica Geller, every role Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock ever took, Peggy Olson, Liz Lemon, Mindy Lahiri, hell, even Eve Polastri — none of them ever quite managed it. At least not until the credits began to roll.

Collective wisdom suggests that it’s impossible. Something always has to give, and usually, these heroines end up choosing their job, and they leave their Austenian fantasies to gather dust on the shelf a little longer. This is empowering. This is canon.

This story isn’t just confined to formulaic television. It’s pervasive in the suspended reality of celebrity – the supposed tragedy of Jennifer Aniston and Taylor Swift’s sad, hollow, unenviable lives – and somehow, it has leaked into our water supply. Now every woman on earth must wander the desert looking for parts of themselves, or else end up alone, pitiable, and incomplete.

That only applies to women, by the way. I have never passed a photo of Timothee Chalamet looking sad and bloated on a magazine at a supermarket checkout, a big yellow headline announcing that he’s been “DUMPED AGAIN”. No “close source” divulges that he cries himself to sleep in his big, empty mansion every night, famous beyond measure but fundamentally unlovable, hurtling towards male menopause and this close to getting a cat.
Having it all. What a concept. As though contentment exists at the bottom of a long checklist, and self-actualisation is a treasure hunt. As though we don’t all chase, chase, chase little totems of joy and grow bored of them as soon as they’re within our grasp.

I have friends whose careers paused or regressed or imploded when they had children. I have friends with good jobs, healthy kids, and awful exes. More than once, I considered quitting my job to move across the country, or the planet, to be with the man of my (deeply misguided) dreams. I once got dumped in the middle of a third date because the guy wasn’t sure I could give him enough attention during the two-week promotional window that followed the release of my second book.

That’s how it always goes: when your life is going too well in one area, another area must implode to ensure balance is kept.

Somehow, “everything but” seems to add up to nothing. Career, love, happiness: pick two.

I don’t have it all. I have a couple of things, and they’re plenty. Sometimes they’re too much. I have a couple of really excellent jobs – I write content for money, books for creative fulfilment, and this column for my ego – an impossibly cute dog, and an apartment that’s OK if you can come to terms with a bathroom that looks like a Russian prison. I have a growing number of little red flags on my phone screen, daily notifications harassing me to reply to Nate Bumble, and regular text messages from my best friend telling me to get back out there before my virginity grows back. Forced to choose between my career, my romantic life, and getting enough sleep, I pick work and sleep. Nate Bumble will just have to wait.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting it all, of course. A job you like, a partner who’s nice to you, enough sunlight and energy left in the day to do the things you love – it doesn’t seem like too much to ask, and somehow, it is.

Maybe if living wasn’t so expensive and work wasn’t so competitive and all-consuming, if childcare was more affordable, if the highlight reel of social media and bad TV hadn’t rotted our brains and warped our expectations of what a happy, settled life was supposed to look like, if we could fundamentally alter the code in our nervous systems that dodges satisfaction and can learn to enjoy “just enough”, this heroine’s journey wouldn’t be so arduous. Maybe if I stopped looking for all the missing pieces and took joy in all the ones I already have, this trope could finally die, and this character could finish her tired, greedy arc.