Girls are not just put on earth for men's amusement while they do the important things.

Attention equals importance equals value equals ego. Or, more realistically, Attention equals success.

In college, unable to be "special" - or in demand - as a girl, I made myself useful, even essential, in my microcosm - as a writer and photographer for the band, particularly for the band director. My "specialness" was to produce something of value, not to look like something (with that different kind of "value"), so I was still fundamentally invisible, but had a significant purpose.

Ambition is something you turn into a plan to create an online personality, a brand, a network.

Despite my belief that somehow my work would get me where I wanted to be, there was still some kind of fathomless yearning. Yes, my career aspirations were always goading me. But partially, I think I tried to let those dreams replace or become the other yearning, to have that other form of value.

Nobody sits alone accompanied only by a stewing ambition that won't see fruit for years. Ambition is something you turn into publicity before there's anything to publicize.

What I was being told in my 20s in the close-quartered, male-ego-infused work space, was that I had to stop reacting with my emotions to sexual desire towards me. The change, in other words, had to be made in me.