On Ambition & Discontentment

I’m guessing everyone in this group has at one time or another felt the pull of serious ambition: not necessarily wanting to be rich or powerful, but wanting to accomplish or contribute something capital-I Important, something that’s particular to your abilities and has wide-ranging effects.  You probably know what that is for you.  Of course, the other way to define “serious ambition” is this: it’s the thing that makes you shudder sometimes when you imagine a future in which you settle down in a community, have kids, and make cinnamon rolls for a living.  In that sense, you could also call it discontentment.

As undergrads, we probably all heard plenty of support-groupy conversations about the upsides and downsides of this feeling, and I’m pretty sure I remember it being beaten to death by angsty student op-eds on a bimonthly basis, so I apologize for any nauseam I’m discussing this ad right now.  But now that we’ve all been out in the real(er) world for a bit, I want to ask the practical question: what have you found to be the best (or worst) way to manage your own ambition/discontentment?  (This can mean “manage” as in “manage a resource” or as in “manage a condition” or both, depending on your evaluation.)  How do you personally keep it useful as opposed to overwhelming, virtuous as opposed to delusional?  Which strains do you cultivate, and which do you try to shut out?

I’m hoping that regardless of how settled or not any of us feel on this, sharing some notes might be helpful.