How to Rediscover Purpose Beyond Ambition | Jenn Romolini

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Jonathan Fields: [00:00:12] So ambition is this loaded word. It's often associated with this relentless drive to succeed, trampling over others as you scrap your way to the top, ignoring your wellbeing, your relationships, any sense of groundedness or meaning or peace or joy along the way. It's what helps you achieve, quote, success, we're told. But what if that was not only wrong, but it also kept you from the work, the relationships, the health, the life, a different kind of success that you didn't just want, but that was actually worth wanting. That would make you feel the way you want to feel. Well, today's guest, Jen Romolini, shares her deeply personal journey rising to the very top of the New York media world, up in the C-suite, then untangling from that toxic drive and letting go of an ambition that didn't align with who she was. Her core values, her aspirations to reclaim something deeper and better. Jen is the author of the raw and emotional memoir Ambition Monster, a memoir about her reckoning with workaholism and obsession with work that really just stemmed from her childhood experiences, and first as a rising star in the New York publishing world. She really appeared to have it all the coveted career, the money, the status. But beneath that picture perfect exterior. The relentless ambition was disconnecting her from her truest self and what really mattered most. And it took a health crisis to forcibly hit pause and have Jen reassess everything.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:45] In this intimate conversation, she shares how losing her voice, I mean literally losing her voice became a wake up call that allowed her to find it again, but in a different way from realizing her workaholism was a trauma response to grappling with external measures of success and finally breaking free and realigning with her core creative calling as a writer. Jen's path shows that there is another way, one where blind ambition doesn't crowd out relationships or well-being and what you value most. So if you've ever felt confined by others versions of what ambition and success should look like, Jen's story offers some real hope for rediscovering and living congruently with your own authentic aspirations. Her perspective will really inspire you to get radically honest about what truly constitutes a good life for you. So excited to share this conversation with you! Let's dive in. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, so I want to let you know about something, especially if you're a coach, consultant, HR pro, or leader through our related research and training organization, SPARKED endeavors, we've been developing next generation tools to really help make better, easier, and more confident career decisions like the Sparketype assessment, a powerful tool that helped well over a million people now and has generated over 50 million data points, making it one of the largest studies on work satisfaction in the world.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:18] And as the Sparketypes have grown into this global phenomenon, coaches and consultants, HR pros and leaders, they began asking us for help unlocking the power of the sparketype tools and body of work for clients and teams. So a number of years back, we created a professional level training and certification. The certified Sparketype advisor program and enrollment is now open for the April training and for those ICF coaches. This training also provides a whopping 40 continuing education credits. So check out the details, see if it feels right, and apply today to save your spot at sparketype.com. Com slash pros or just click the link in the show notes. Now. I feel like the word ambition, the experience, ambition, conversations around ambition, success, what they mean, what they don't mean, and how we're wired for them has entered the zeitgeist a lot more since we found ourselves coming out of the pandemic. And maybe that's just me, but I feel like that was this moment where so many people really re-examined what is a thing called work that I'm doing? How am I bringing myself to it? What's it giving me back to me and this ambition I've been striving for? Like the work, work, work. I'm going for the brass ring. Um. Is that really what I want? I'm curious whether you feel like there's been sort of like a reemergence or reexamination in the last couple of years to.

Jenn Romolini: [00:04:46] Oh, I think for sure. I mean, I think we see it with all of the burnout books that came out a few years ago. I think we see it as a correction to the sort of girlboss of the 20 tens. I think we see it as the midlife crisis of Gen X, who were really the recipients of the women's rights movement and really the first generation that fully was working, you know, just all out ambition. And I think that there was a sort of collective during the pandemic feeling about work as a highest measure of a life success. This feeling of is that all there is? Wait, is that that it? I'm not sure that's really it. I do think to some degree, I mean, certainly there's the trend of quiet quitting and there's, you know, the lazy girl job, all of those things. I don't know if we've gotten it quite right yet, because now I think the pendulum is swinging a little too far to the other side. Because what we're not talking about is the gratification that can come from ambition and achieving goals. If those goals are personal, and if those goals are not about some external idea of what you're supposed to be.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:08] No, I think that is such an important part of the conversation, and I agree. I feel like it isn't getting centered nearly as much. I think we tend to look at ambition or success and say it's either good or bad. It's a binary thing. It's like not so much, you know, it's like, what's driving that? What's underneath that? If you're devoting yourself to something really deep and profound and meaningful and joyful, it can be incredibly powerful. But it also doesn't protect you from things like burnout and overwork and workaholism. Like, you can experience all of those even doing something that on the most fundamental level is you would think would be pretty nourishing.

Jenn Romolini: [00:06:44] Yes and no. I would say, because I think that there is a situation that happens when you are doing work for yourself and you know this is the path I want to be on. This isn't about external validation. This is I've really examined myself and my life and I've thought, what do I really want to do before I die? Right. And you've sort of backed yourself from there. I have found, because I am certainly a workaholic, and I absolutely love work. And I have found that when the goal is personal and I am just hustling for it, I feel rejuvenated by the energy that I'm putting into work, even if it's excessive. But when it's for something else, for a way that I think I'm supposed to be in the world, whether it's for checking boxes, you know, oh, I should go for this promotion. I should take this dream job. I would be crazy not to. Those kinds of things. Those kinds of motivations. Those are the things that deplete us.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:51] Yeah, it's almost like, are you building something that is an emanation of you, or are you trying to fill a hole that was probably dug, at least in part, by any number of other people?

Jenn Romolini: [00:08:05] Yes, yes. Are you living a life of purpose that aligns with your values? Are you able to grow in whatever you're doing? You know, I think that especially for women, I would say work is so intertwined with this idea of being good with goodness. And I'm going to go above and beyond, not because I have to, and not even necessarily that I'm going to get a reward that's going to sustain me or my family, but because I want to be considered good, I want that validation. And again, that's external. And that's when we get into Trouble with ambition, I think.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:49] Let's deconstruct those stories that we. I think that where the seed gets planted when we're pretty young about work and ambition and success and and you write so powerfully about this in your book, you had very specific experiences and stories coming from your family culture, like certain ones coming from your mom in a sense of competitiveness, with playfulness that could also sometimes go off the rails. And then on your dad's side too, with sort of like a really an interesting framing around strength and vulnerability and winning. Take me into this a bit, because it's really fascinating the way that those sort of like showed up in your life and then almost like laid down patterns that stayed with you.

Jenn Romolini: [00:09:25] I am most certainly a product of the American dream. My parents were teenagers when they had me. They didn't. Neither of them had high school educations, but they lived and they built from that a business. Or my father did, got us out of, you know, what was lower class? Lower class life. Not necessarily poverty, but certainly lower class into an upper middle class life, which took a lot of hustle and took everything that we are told about the American dream. It was non-stop work. It was persistence. It was, you know, all of it. I don't know if that was work that was satisfying to him, but that wasn't really part of the equation. Right? It was about survival and salvation. And my parents had very traditional gender roles. My mother ran a household. She wound up having two other children after me, and my father worked, and my mother had me when she was just turned 17. She was always telling me, never be reliant on a man, always make your own money. They had a tumultuous relationship, I mean, as you do when you are teenagers. But he had all the power and he had the power because he made the money. And I watched that for sure. And then the other side of this. I had this really hard working. And let me say, my parents are people of immense integrity.

Jenn Romolini: [00:10:49] I love them very much. But of course, you know, you get to a certain age and you start to examine, you know, how did I get here? Right? And you start to you start to pick things apart a bit. My father just had more power in the house, and he just had more freedom because of how much he worked, but also our extended family and our immediate family. We all sort of exalted him because he gave us. He provided for us, he provided our lives, but he worked constantly. I had very little relationship with him growing up. I craved a relationship with him. And so when I was 13, I said to him, you know, can I, can I start working for you? I just I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to be in his world. And I did not want my mother's life, which was about cleaning up after everyone. And it seemed so thankless what she had to do and running a home. And that messaging really brought me into the working world. But then, you know, of course, a blue collar life and a working class life and what ambition looks like in those environments is very different than what it looks like in a white collar world, which is where I eventually landed.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:07] I mean, you go from there seeming like a very strong work ethic and a devotion to family and like providing and do what you need to do, and then you land eventually, you know, over a period of years and sort of like the New York City magazine, media and tech world, the blend of all of those in different, which is a radically different work culture and radically different work environment. On the one hand, it gives you all the opportunity in the world to effectively work until you die.

Jenn Romolini: [00:12:36] Absolutely.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:36] You know, which, if you're wired in a particular way, which you were coming into this, you're like, okay, here we go.

Jenn Romolini: [00:12:41] Quite a lot to prove to you, right? Because I didn't have a pedigree. I was really a fish out of water in those in, you know, sort of upper class environments. You know, especially in magazines, especially in lifestyle magazines where, you know, you're selling sort of prestige to other people. You're an arbiter of taste. You know, it was it. But the thing that surprised me the most in white collar environments was I really had expected work to be a meritocracy, because in a lot of blue collar jobs, that's kind of how it is. Like, you work hard, you are rewarded. I was a waitress for a decade. The more work I put in, the more money I made. It was a very simple equation, and that is not the case in corporate America. In fact, you might actually be worse off. The harder you work, you know, because you become like a sucker. You're a receptacle for everybody else's slacking off or, you know, you just if you don't know how to play the game and you're just like hustling, hustling, hustling, it really doesn't reward you that much unless it's incredibly strategic.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:49] Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And I think so many people have probably found themselves in that spot also where they're like, they show up, they work incredibly hard. Other people see them working incredibly hard. They're like, oh, here's somebody who's going to get everything. What's that classic phrase, right? Like, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person, which is, hey, great for you as the giver. But like that busy person becomes known as the person to get get stuff done person. And all of a sudden they're just getting crushed because everybody's starting to say, oh, I'll give it to the busy person. I know they'll do whatever they need to do to get it done. I feel like oftentimes in sort of like corporate culture, that that person gets pigeonholed as being that person, and nobody wants them to leave that sort of pigeonholing because it means that the work comes back to them.

Jenn Romolini: [00:14:35] Well, corporate systems, From my experience, they don't really reward competence as much as they reward survival. Right?

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:46] Break that down more for me.

Jenn Romolini: [00:14:48] So say a job has a set of goals and expectations, right? You can sort out how to do those and just those never going above and beyond, but also work strategically to curry favor with a boss to understand the corporate political system. And that employee who puts in minimal work but understands the politics of the system and is strategic, is going to succeed far more than the employee who is constantly working nose to the grindstone and doing more and more in that role. Because, like you said, we want to keep that person in that role. We don't want to move them up. Why would we? I moved up quite a bit. I was kind of both. I was both strategic and I worked maniacally. So I rose through the ranks because I also kept thinking, well, with the next promotion and the next raise, I'm going to feel satisfied. If I could just get there, then I wouldn't have all this other stuff they don't like doing. Maybe I'll like that stuff more, but also power. I thought, you know, I just need to get a little more power and then I'm going to feel less disempowered. But none of that turned out to be the case.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:07] So as you find yourself in that world, in that life, working like crazy, rising up like being in some levels rewarded for it, at least externally. What's happening on the inside for you?

Jenn Romolini: [00:16:19] There's I think it's the Buddhist phrase external riches, internal rot. You know, I was so on the train, in the wheel, on the ride, however you want to say it, I couldn't think about anything else. It became all consuming for me, and it was to the deficit of and to the detriment of, and to the neglect of almost everything else in my life. I think the only thing that I managed to eke out as successful as work is I managed to be a present parent as much as I could be. That's really all I had, though, and I didn't really have any fortifying friendships outside of work, which, you know, I had friendships with my employees, but then you're just in it and in it and in it because you're just talking about work all the time. I wasn't really tending to my marriage, but more than anything, I. I just wasn't an interesting person anymore. I only cared about work, and work is so boring. Really. Like the ins and outs of work are really kind of boring. And it was all I would really talk about to anybody and I would see. I could tell that like, it wasn't wasn't landing, you know, who wants to know about your internal like your CEO and how you think they're messing things up? Like nobody wants to talk about that. But when you are fixated. I was hyper fixated and I had no escape. I had I had nothing outside of it. I really lost so much of the breadth of my life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:17:55] Did you have a sense? I think having this conversation now, you know, like, I think you probably have a really strong sense for who you are and who you've always been. If you can take yourself back there to sort of like this moment where you're starting to really wake up to like, something's not right here. Did you have a sense for really who you were back then, or were you so far from it that you couldn't actually really connect to it in that moment?

Jenn Romolini: [00:18:19] And I think this happens to a lot of, of kids who it's, you know, it's called there's a connection between workaholism and something called parentification. Right. Where you have you come from a tumultuous home, chaotic home. You have expectations put on you. From a young age, I was a very sensitive, creative, weird kid in a tough, working class family, and I think that I never really embraced who I really was because I didn't think it was the right way to be in the world. And also, I thought that the way I really was, the soft, tender way I really was the creative, gentle person I was was not going to survive. I mean, I was told that overtly and like, but also it was just something I gleaned from my surroundings when I was in corporate environments, when I was in rooms full of all men and I could hold my own and I could outtough them and I could be as ruthless as they were, I thought, well, this feels bad, but look at me doing this. This is amazing that I can do this. And then part of it was gender too. I felt a responsibility. I was one of the few female corporate leaders in my department. You know, I felt a sense of responsibility and accomplishment that even if it wasn't satisfying, I felt like, well, if I if I can do this and I'm really good at it, clearly, maybe I should do it. And I think that's something that's really difficult is when you are really good at something you don't like, you know, like when we excel for whatever our makeup is. And I would say not to throw the T word around, but I think that the majority of my success was because of trauma response. I'm incredibly hypervigilant, you know, all of these things. Right? So I was basically like dysregulated all the time. I was hypervigilant, I was always looking for danger everywhere, so it made me an incredible employee.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:33] I've often used the phrase just because you could doesn't mean you should. It's such an interesting conundrum. You know, if you are really good at something, whether through hard work and skill development or maybe just naturally like this is your gift, there is this sense of obligation that we tend to have to be like, oh, this is I have to do this thing. And especially if you see that that thing is well rewarded, it gives you status, it gives you money or, and or it genuinely helps the organization or community or someone that you want to be in service of. You're like, this is the thing I'm here to do, because I wouldn't be so good at it if it wasn't that way. And I feel like we we give so much energy and oftentimes so many years or decades of our lives and our careers to doing that out of a sense of obligation, not genuine interest or passion or meaning or purpose, for sure.

Jenn Romolini: [00:21:26] I mean, the whole system, the system is set up to reward exactly that behavior. By the end, I was really rewarded for this. You know, I had I had I remember like Cosmo called me up and they said, you know, we want to feature you in this regular column we do called Get Her Life. And I was like, are you kidding?

Jonathan Fields: [00:21:47] You're like, if you if only you knew.

Jenn Romolini: [00:21:50] You know, it was like, I had a dream job, you know, I was this I had this coveted life. I almost felt ungrateful that I was so unhappy. And it's hard to break yourself out of that. It takes a lot of courage to bust out of that kind of societal norm, I think, and convention.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:10] I feel like for a lot of people that you can sort of layer on shame because you're like, I shouldn't feel this way. So many other people would quote, like, want to be in this position, you know, like, and for me, I'm just sitting here feeling miserable about it or complaining about it, even if not externally. Internally, to myself. And who am I to be complaining about this? That's shameful behavior. And it just. And then it creates an even worse spin cycle.

Jenn Romolini: [00:22:34] Exactly. Or of course I have agency. I can change this, I can take these skills and I could go to another place and maybe that will be better. And maybe, you know, there has to be a way to fix this, right? It can't be. It can't be that I just shouldn't be doing this. That's silly. Of course I'm an executive. Look at me. And then, of course, you get some clout and you get a reputation and all of those things and all of these things, all of these, like, micro addictions sort of add up. You know, work is a behavior addiction. It's a process addiction. So eventually you do feel a sort of sense of helplessness and you feel like it's carrying you away in a way.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:13] When you end up having surgery on your vocal cords and you have this two week window where you go back to work, you're there, but you're forced to observe and not sort of, like, fill the space with your voice. It sounds like this is almost like a forced time of reflection and observation. And I wonder if the fact that actually you were physically unable to contribute vocally, it made your brain just default to seeing so much of what you didn't see before. Both internally, but also around you. Like what was unfolding around you on a day to day basis. Between you, between other people. Like as they talked, like, related to themselves and maybe even like larger dynamics, power structures, just the way that people treated each other, even the mood, like the affect, the energy of people. I wonder if that all started flooding in once you were forced to create that space?

Jenn Romolini: [00:24:07] Absolutely. That's absolutely correct. I think that I quieted my mind. I literally quieted my mind because I wasn't talking right. And I could feel things more profoundly. And I had a Visceral disgust from what I was hearing because I wasn't trying to win the game. I was just looking at the game. I just remember sitting in these meetings and watching like ill thought out strategies. That's that's a big thing that happens in jobs, right? Like somebody just presenting one ill thought out. So it's like they're just trying to get on the board. Right? Nobody's thinking, is this going to work? Is it not? Or they're making this one person's making a big case and it's so much noise. So much of these dynamics in these meetings are just noise. And when I wasn't concerned or I couldn't be concerned about, you know, when it came to my turn, what noise am I going to put out? You know, I really just was like, this is stupid. This is all stupid and silly. And I am getting very stressed out by something that is stupid and silly. And I am spending the majority of my life. Of my waking hours. Thinking about something and contributing to an organization for work I don't really respect. I don't believe in for people who don't really respect me and don't align with how I think the world should be, and in that moment, I was not courageous. I didn't like, have some big, you know, network speech and storm out. I just stopped working quite as hard. And then within six months I was fired, like I had reputationally been brought on because everybody knew that I would do anything, I would I would plow through a wall to get it done. And I stopped being that person, which meant I was no longer right for the role. And I was fired.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:11] You know, on the one hand, you're like, okay, what a fantastic experience or what a great window for you to now step back and say, okay, let me reflect on all this. Let me see what I really want. How do I step back into this world of work in a way that feels more holistic and supportive? But on the other hand, as you describe, like you're the primary breadwinner, there are practical concerns here because I think folks may hear stories like this and like, well, that's great, but I'm like, I've got to pay the rent. I've got to pay the mortgage. I'm the person who actually takes care of the family and all this. You were that person also. This was on you. Yeah. So how do you start to navigate, do this dance where it's like, okay, I need to figure out a different way. Like where I came from. Like, I can't go back there. Like something has changed in me. Like there has to be a different way forward. But at the same time, you're living the trappings of a life that has built around the rewards generated by working that way and being that person for years. That's not necessarily an easy thing to unwind.

Jenn Romolini: [00:27:10] No, it was it was not an easy and and let me say like, I think that because I grew up without a lot of money, I'm sometimes confused when I'm talking about things like class. I think that I still think of myself as a working class person, even though I, you know, I'm not. I'm a white collar person. I made some money. We had had my husband and I had saved up enough money to buy a house. And when I got fired, I said, I can't get another job. For a while, it was like everything had come up for me, and I felt very like I couldn't get myself back on line. I just felt very disoriented and I knew that I just couldn't proceed as normal. And so we didn't wind up buying that house, and I took a little bit of a break. I was working a lot freelance, but I never went back to a big job. And I, I changed the trajectory of our life. I changed us from upper middle class people to middle class people, and we had to make that decision. And I realized being able to make that decision is an incredibly Privileged thing to be able to make, and I'm so aware of that. But it was a decision for the health of our family. I feel like for the health of my marriage, for my relationship with my child, all of those things, it was the right decision for us to make. And we just, financially at least, began living a much smaller life.

Jenn Romolini: [00:28:38] And one thing that I did almost immediately coming out of that was I had never really understood money. I didn't grow up having it, so I never really understood it. I was very self-flagellating person, and I feel like I didn't care about myself enough to respect my money and to consider financial education a kind of self-care, right? And protection. So I really, for the first time in my life, in my mid-forties, educated myself about money. And that was really, really helpful because then I could understand. Well, all right, Yeah. We can live on less and. All right. Well, what are our dreams, really? And how do we keep ourselves safe for retirement as we make this transition safe ish? You know, I had never invested in myself in that way. And that, I think, is one of the most important things that came out of this, because you can keep making money and just throwing it in a bag somewhere, like I didn't. I just didn't understand it. I was like throwing it in a bag and then throw it in the backyard and burn it like I really, I just didn't I didn't get what you were supposed to do, and now I do. And I feel like I really grew up too, because like any addiction, if you are working all the time, you're development is arresting a little bit because you're not thinking, you're not living, you're not growing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:04] It sounds like also, money was one of those patterns that got laid down when you were a kid. And decades later, this was the first time where you go back and revisit that and say, huh? This was a level of understanding that has been guiding me up until this point in life, and maybe it's time to question if that's serving me and the choices that I want to make moving forward. And to really do the research, do the education, to be able to say, I need to write my own rules around money so that that can power the decisions that I make moving forward in a way that honors me more, not necessarily the rules that were passed on to me when I was a kid, and the mindset probably around it as well, so that I can build on that to make decisions about how I now want to step back into the world of work and life in a way that feels more nourishing. It's interesting you said we were living a financially smaller life, but I wonder if at the same time, you still felt a bigger sense of freedom?

Jenn Romolini: [00:31:05] Oh for sure, for sure. I can't tell you the kind of satisfaction that my work has brought me in the past five years, and the joy of it and the freedom for sure. I think that all of the money, definitely, but also just my decisions that I now make about my career. It's all about intentionality. It's all thoughtful. It's very personal. My definition of success is very personal. I don't make decisions anymore. With my LinkedIn profile top of mind. I don't care what things look like to the outside world. That's the biggest shift for me. What that's resulted in is a well of deep satisfaction and also a real sense of accomplishment, because I've done a couple of things in the last few years that I never thought I could do, but I always wanted to do. That's real success.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:09] So tell me about some of those things.

Jenn Romolini: [00:32:11] Well, I wrote this book and it's the best work I've ever done. I always wanted to be a, quote, real writer, you know? And it's a real book. And I'm a real writer.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:20] I love that you've been writing for, like, literally your entire adult life. And you still, like, like, didn't think of yourself as a, quote, real writer until you had this book out.

Jenn Romolini: [00:32:29] Well, I think even that even creative work, even creative projects can be done for you or for someone else. And this book was really for me. And when I finished it, I really had that, like, oh, I did it. I knew I had done it, I had I had satisfied what I set out to do. And so the external reaction didn't really matter to me as much, because the success was already there before anybody ever read it. And then, you know, I chased down a project that I had been thinking about for 20 years. I like basically would have been a hobby. I'd been collecting these this old magazines for years, and I turned it into a narrative podcast. And so I got to write a like a documentary podcast, and it was so challenging to write in this new form, and my brain was working in this whole new way, and I was really learning. I was so active and so engaged, and it was really hard work. And I, you know, some weeks I worked on it every single day of the week, but I never got burnt out from it because the brain loves competence, the brain loves acquiring skills. Right? We love it so much. And I knew I was no longer stuck. I was like, oh, I'm I'm in a whole new journey here with this. And every day felt like a delight. It was that beginner's mind like, oh, how do I puzzle over this? And I was really able to let my ego put my ego aside, even as, like an older, you know, middle aged person and have like younger people teach me things too, which is not easy to do. I think that's part of why we get stuck as we get older. You know, it's like, ah, I don't know. This is really humbling that I don't know this.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:06] Over these last few years as your reimagining so much, what becomes important to you like in your mind? What are the criteria that make you say yes and no?

Jenn Romolini: [00:34:17] The number one thing for me is community at this point. Friendships, community. Family. That's the number one thing. Protecting that as much as I can. When I got fired, my child was eight, and I was acutely aware of how fast that first eight years had gone and I knew how fast the next eight were going to go. So I don't work after three anymore. I work early, I start at six, but I never took jobs. In the times that I was freelance, I never took jobs that would require me to send emails after three. That would. I don't want to be in two places at once anymore. That was the biggest thing. Boundaries around work was really my biggest issue and I really needed to set that. And then, you know, I really think about commitment. Do I want to commit to this not just for money, but understanding that my time on the planet is finite. And do I want to? Unless I absolutely have to deuce engage with something for hours that I don't enjoy that I might be good at, but I absolutely hate. Now, sometimes you just do work because it is survival and you need to grab that bag like freelancers. It's a hustle. Cobbling together a salary is no joke. But like I am very clear with myself that there has to be a purpose. And maybe that purpose is, well, this will pay rent for the next six months. But if not, I'm not. I'm not taking it on. The difference is, is I'd rather be not working than working in something I don't like. And that was not the way it was before. I think I was afraid of myself before and I didn't like time that was not working because I didn't want to be exploring my brain or, you know, chilling out with my husband or whatever it was because I didn't know how to really be a person. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:09] I mean, I wonder if also sometimes when your work absolutely consumes all your waking hours and you do have this other person in your life, but you're really not interacting with them in a whole lot in a deep and meaningful way, that when you get dropped back into it, if you almost have to relearn how to be with each other now that you're actually sort of like it's a very different context and dynamic for sure.

Jenn Romolini: [00:36:33] And the power dynamic for us certainly changed because like I said in the very beginning of this, the person who makes all the money is in a different power position than the person who doesn't. And our playing field was certainly leveled when I stopped making all the money, which was among the better things that's ever happened to our 20 year marriage. But one question I do ask myself all the time is am I behaving like a person who wants to be married? Is the way I've. The way I've approached this situation is the space I'm giving this person. Are these the actions of a person who wants to stay married? How is this going to come across to this person? And if you are all consumed with something else and not present, you don't have time to think those things out. And so you really lose consideration. You wind up like just barking things at a spouse and just being like, well, we just have to get through this. You know? This is just the time, I think having the time, the privilege of the time to slow things down in my life has been a big priority for me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:39] I wonder, also, you write about this, um, you know, you spent some time working with an Irish cannabis media project. I did, but also you being able to just see a different culture, a different way that people explore work and life. Did that meaningfully inform? Sort of like the way that you're looking at the relationship now as well?

Jenn Romolini: [00:38:00] For sure. Yeah. The company I worked for was based in Ireland, and it was so funny because I'd get on, you know, and because of the time difference. I'm in Los Angeles. I was dealing with people all the way, you know, in, in Ireland. And I would get on at 5 a.m. and I would open up the zoom. I always had a meeting every, every morning at 5 a.m. and I would open up the zoom. And, you know, here I am, I'm chipper and ready to go and like, half the people would be missing. And I would say, hey Johnny, where is everyone? And he would say, oh, well, they have the day off. And it's because they have dozens of state sanctioned days off a month that they have. I mean, a year that they have to take. Right? So every month you have several employees out and it's just the way it works. It's just somebody's always out and it's fine. Actually, the people I worked with, I don't know if this is how everyone works in, say, the UK, but the people I worked with, they logged in at a certain time and they logged out at another time and that was it.

Jenn Romolini: [00:38:57] If I sent them an email after hours, they were responding to me the next day and part of my job, which was very enticing to me, especially where I was in my life and my brain space was. I had to spend a week in Ireland every two months, so I spent a lot of time in the office and out of the office with these colleagues, and I really got a sense of what they prioritize and what they didn't. And salaries there were not very high. Nobody had a lot of money, but there was a lot of support for them. There was a real like safety net for them by their government. So that's one thing, but just a de-emphasis of work. It was not how they measured a successful life. And I remember sitting with them and really just enjoying my time there, number one, but really enjoying being able to slow down and knowing that even if I had a list of ten problems that we needed to fix right this minute, Nobody was going to fix them, so I just had to ride it out. That was a real learning experience.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:04] Yeah. I mean, it's just it's a cultural shift that makes you really think about things differently and, like, circling all the way back to the beginning of our conversation where I feel like ambition isn't necessarily gone and some people still have the same old ambition for the same definition of success, and they're hard charging and they're like, like doing that exact same thing. But I feel like increasingly we're just ambitious for different things. Yes, we're ambitious for love, for peace, for peace of mind. To be able to exhale, to be able to spend time with like people we can't get enough of. And we're elevating that, you know, to the level of this actually matters as much, if not more. You know, we're asking the question, what's in service of what?

Jenn Romolini: [00:40:46] Yes, yes, I am ambitious to feel content. I don't expect happiness every day, but I am ambitious to feel a sense of equanimity in my life. You can't find when your life is out of balance. And I am ambitious to invest in friendship, which is something I've really lacked for the majority of my life and is so important, especially as you get older, right? And just being a good person, how do I show up every day? Those are things you need space and time to think about. We don't just come out being good people who know how to like, manage ourselves in the world. And many of our childhoods don't help with that, right? So it takes work and it takes effort. And that's something to be ambitious for, being a person who means something and other people's lives, all of those things. That's how I calculate if I'm a success now.

[00:41:46] Mm. Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:51] And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It will open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.