Wednesday felt like a thrilling workday. I was sent texts to edit that felt intellectually stimulating and that challenged my faculties as a copyeditor. One piece of copy spoke about what it might mean to think like a carpet—to embody the mind and materiality of a knot within a weave and to understand one’s being in relation to the other knots. It sounded bizarre, yet prophetic at the same time. Later in the evening when I took our child for a long walk in his stroller, I was delighted at the sight of him soaking in the world. I suddenly dwelt on how peaceful I felt in that moment. I’d had a great workday. Apart from the full-time work I’m doing I was also able to spend time on another exciting freelance project. I was still reeling from the relief of having finished with the work that was the result of two separate grants I had received. For the first time since I moved to Europe, I found I was not counting every single cent. I wondered to myself if I had in fact ‘made it’?

I began thinking about what it means to have ‘made it’ or to have ‘arrived’, especially when you come from a middle class migrant background where the ultimate dream is usually connected with owning land. At 37, I have not managed to amass ‘capital’ in its conventional forms. My bank account is not sizable. I have some savings, but no apartment that I own. But unlike many who do own property, I have no debt to speak of. I do not owe any bank any money, all my books are in order, and I am, for a change, not hustling… I was lucky to have the perfect job land in my lap, one for which I am overqualified, but which remunerates me reasonably well and allows the flexibility of working from home and involves having a compassionate and rather wonderful person, a fellow art critic, as my manager. For someone like me who is fully capable of being in a leadership position and yet prefers the luxury of working quietly without having to attend to the stress of thousands of meetings or even having to delegate work, I feel I am in this perfect situation. I’ve never really had career ambitions. What I’ve sought most consistently has been the privilege of working from home and earning just about enough to sustain that. It helps me to be loyal to myself and my own work and not to over-identify with the mission statements of the places I may work at or with.