(PNS reporting from HOUSTON) After careful consideration, local woman Estela Zamora, 28, is aiming to be less ambitious in 2015.
“Turns out the ‘American Dream’ doesn’t mean to aim for the stars, but rather, right under the stars, where it’s safe and there’s more company,” Zamora told PNS Sunday.
“I’m just tired of getting flack for aiming too damn high!”
After a tortured 2014 in which she was rejected from jobs for “aspiring to management,” dumped by her boyfriend for not wanting to settle for the “Oops! We’re pregnant” route to marriage and criticized by her family for pursuing graduate school and using “big, fancy words” in normal conversation, Zamora is going to try mediocrity in 2015.
“I never thought I’d be that woman who wanted to settle, but at this point I’d be happy if people just stopped henpecking me and left me alone. If being ‘normal’ is the way to get there, then I’m there!”
Second Ward resident Zamora earned a scholarship from/graduated from Yale and has been pursing combined MBA/JD degrees at Rice while volunteering in her community and working part time to help her family financially.
She told PNS that while she was happy she was improving herself and also giving back, the struggle to justify her ambition tired her out.
“Chivo, my boyfriend of two-and-a-half years, started complaining about my not wanting to stop what I was doing to get accidentally impregnated by him and my parents also started to give me the ‘Se te va a pasar el tren’ speech. I found myself alienated from the people I love in 2014,” she said.
“Maybe I am too ambitious!” she said.
After getting rejected from a dream job because — as the hiring manager told her — “wanting to move into management is not a requirement of this role,” Zamora decided she’d had enough.
Although lots of people aspire to “bigger and better in 2015,” Zamora said she’d be fine with “lesser and just OK.”
“Am I right, people?” she asked.
But, as usual, no one listened.