I want to be good; I want to be kind. I want to work, chat, dream and be myself.

But how do you make it through life like that? How do you make it through your professional life like that? In most worlds, the sharks call the shots.

I get it, but I don’t find it easy. I don’t find it easy to be taken seriously and not lose my personality, my sensibility. My loyalty. The stronger I act, the better I hide my weaknesses. It works. But I don’t like it, really. I drift.

I stop myself from writing “sorry” in emails; I stop myself from joking, from sharing. I stop myself from goofing around, from admitting flaws.

Maybe that’s what growing up is about. I’m not sure. Shouldn’t it be about knowing what you believe in, taking advice, picking your influences, and moving forward in a direction you chose?

Shouldn’t sincerity be the overall rule, rather than playing roles to progress, advance… climb?

Sometimes we let a role define us when it should be the opposite. I know I have, to some extend. I’ve let myself take things seriously; I’ve forgotten why I chose that life in the first place.

A journalist I like, Géraldine Dormoy, recently wrote about modern jobs, big companies, and the doubts that often come with them.

“Consultant or baker […], whatever our professional life is, what matters is to be yourself in it,” she said.

Maybe that’s the key. I can’t change the order of things, the politics or the strategies. But I can decide of who I am around it, of how I evolve with it. I can toughen up, knowing it’s only a thicker skin.