There's Gotta Be More To Life

How to create a life that feels as good as it looks

A few months ago, after texting a friend the messages above, the song, “There’s Gotta Be More To Life” immediately popped into my head. (It’s originally sung by Stacie Oriccio but I also love the cover by Natalie Weiss.)

I've got it all
But I feel so deprived
I go up, I come down, and I'm emptier inside
Tell me, what is this thing that I feel like I'm missing?
And why can't I let it go?

Music is incredibly intertwined with memory for me. And so, when I hit play and heard the first chords of the song, I immediately recalled listening to it about a thousand times on the subway home from a temp job that was causing me intense physical and mental anguish. (A different temp job than the two I discuss in my book, The Start of It All.)

Less than two weeks in, I was somehow in charge of preparing contracts for new hires at multiple locations worldwide, scheduling very complex interview processes, and running a busy front desk.

Even better, I had to fight tooth and nail to book conference rooms for said interviews, after the scheduling was done and over. Booking a conference room at this office felt harder than getting tickets to a sold-out show. It might have been on par with what Swifites went through getting Eras Tour tickets. That was my every day at this office, after a very short onboarding experience where I was mostly told to “figure it out as I go.”

I once passed my manager in the hallway after messing up something pretty big a few days in, and his response was to laugh it off and shrug, with a very clear “That’s on you. Good luck figuring that out!” look on his face. While I didn’t want to be micromanaged, I also didn’t want to be thrown to the wolves. I felt totally lost and stressed out to the extent that it’s still hard to reflect on years later.

And yet…

I was making enough money to support myself. I got to wear cute business casual outfits to work and go to Dig Inn every day for lunch. The office kitchen was stocked with amazing snacks and drinks. The kitchens were always the best parts of these big office temp jobs. I never knew there were so many brands and flavors of sparkling water.

Some of my favorite business casual looks. A mirror selfie taken in my old apartment on the left, and another taken in the Public Theater bathroom on the right. (I temped at a lot of offices near the Public Theater downtown! I forget why I was there in this particular photo - probably stopping by to hang out in the Library or maybe see a show after work. Or honestly, possibly just to use the bathroom. The Public Theater has one of the best bathrooms in Manhattan, and the largest bathrooms for any theater I’ve personally seen, in New York City. Also, I just love The Public Theater. Okay, back to the essay.

There was an invisible badge of status that I received when working in a 9 to 5 office, that I had never even come close to earning as a working actor. I felt like the “world'“ was taking me seriously for the first time in my post-college life. Something about my Ann Taylor business casual outfit seemed to say, “I have my life together” in a way that leggings and oversized sweaters did not. Riding the train in rush hour twice a day to go to a job I didn’t care about, somehow made me feel like more of an adult than I did when I was producing and acting in a play that I wrote.

For context - a few years prior, during my senior year at Vassar, I produced my first play and won the playwriting award. When I produced that same play in New York, the show was successful but deeply stressful to put on. I knew I was ready to take a break from acting before we even began the rehearsal process, but I was too burnt out to explore other careers in theater just yet. The idea of being a professional writer didn’t cross my mind - I just wanted to get a “real office job”, make some money, and move out of my childhood bedroom. And thus, my temp year, as I call it, began.

Here I was, doing exactly what I’d set out to do. A typical business Barbie millennial on the verge of a breakdown, drinking her sorrows away after 6 PM and all weekend long. I was even dating a law student who could have easily passed for a finance bro. My life looked perfectly normal and fine.

But on the inside, I was crumbling. And that day on the subway, when this song came on my playlist on the way home — I suddenly imploded. I think I might have missed my stop, just standing on the train hitting repeat over and over again.

I called in sick the next day. I quit the next.

I was riddled with guilt. I was terrified that I would “get in trouble.” And, I kind of did. My manager at the temp agency was pissed. The people at the office politely and texted me asking for passwords that they urgently needed, in order to access time-sensitive contracts. I felt horrible (and I also wondered why a temp was being trusted with such crucial information.)

To be clear, the moral of this story is not, “Go quit your job* immediately if you hate it.” I am proud that I listened to that inner voice shouting at me and I would plan my departure differently today.

*I also can’t tell this story without acknowledging my immense privilege to be able to leave a stressful job so quickly. I haven’t always had that privilege. I have been in many, many situations where I’ve had to ignore that feeling that something was missing and suppress my desire for something more.

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Two other favorite quotes from Sophia Bush’s recent essay in Glamour, that I mentioned in the beginning —

“There have been moments in my life when it feels like the universe is screaming at me to pay attention. This was one of them, but I didn’t listen.”

“It is so, so scary to do the brave thing, to say, “I’m just not happy.” Especially if you’re in a partnership and you have to say it first. But if you do it, you get the chance to be happy. To find your joy.

Whether it’s finding a new job, making space for yourself and your passions in your schedule, cultivating authentic relationships, or even just starting to get to know yourself more deeply so that you figure out what’s important to you — those kinds of journeys are my favorite.

I’m here to help you sit with and sort through that gnawing, unexplainable feeling that something is off in your life. That “there’s gotta be more to life” feeling.

Because there is. And there can be. If you’re looking for permission to explore what “more” means to you — consider this it.

I center authenticity in my work because I’m far more interested in what you want than what you think you should want. A big part of helping people figure out their next steps involves helping them expand their possibilities (both “real” and not yet imagined.)

I love helping people create lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside because I know what it’s like to live a life that looks amazing on the outside, and feels like…. well, it sometimes used to feel like people thought I was just floating along in perfect bliss, when I was really on the cusp of sinking. It was like the water I was floating in was pretty from afar, but deep, rocky, and full of sharks if you dared to take a closer look. I lived in those waters for years, long before I arrived at that temp job. I think it was just somehow the tipping point.

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This is not an overnight thing; creating a life that feels as good as it looks. (Or even, better than it looks.)

And it’s also not a one-size-fits-all process. You can go as quickly or slowly as you need to. There is no wrong way to start this kind of journey. You’ll know when it’s time to begin.

I for one, did not quit that temp job and immediately start living the kind of life I wanted to live overnight. It took time. Some things probably looked like they happened “overnight” when in reality, a lot of trial and error was involved. It can take time to figure out what you really want, and then to pursue it.

I never could’ve imagined my life being so different from what it was back then when I was in my “temp year.” I would dream of different kinds of lives - but it was hard to imagine them being real.

And here I am, living a wholly different life than I expected.

A life that honestly feels better than I ever imagined it could.

A life that is completely and utterly mine.

A life that I can’t wait to keep building.

If any of this resonates with you, consider checking out my guided journal, Authentic by Alexa. It’s full of journal prompts, visualization exercises, and personal anecdotes designed to help you cultivate more authenticty and alignment in your life.

I also talk more about my journey and more ways that I’ve pivoted (and more jobs that I’ve quit) in recent podcast appearances at the bottom of this page.

Here’s to lives that feel as good as they look.

Here’s to figuring out what you really want.

And all the unexpected places your longings may lead you.

PS I’m being led somewhere incredibly surprising and very exciting soon. I’m going to try to live it before I write about it - but I can’t wait to tell you how it all pans out.