35 Isn’t a Crisis, It’s a Reckoning

MJ Wynn
5 days ago
4 min read

I want to be known.

Not in the Kardashian, paparazzi-chasing, name-on-a-billboard sense. Not in the “you can’t buy groceries without being recognized” way. I don’t want the fame hangover or the loss of privacy or the weird pressure to become a brand before I even get to be a person.

I just want to be known in the quieter, heavier way.

The kind of known that means something I did mattered. That something I made outlived me, even just a little. That when I eventually clock out of this plane of existence, there’s proof I was here—and not just in the bureaucratic sense. Not just a birth certificate and a death notice and a couple tagged photos on someone else’s feed.

I want to leave a mark.

There. I said it.

And yes, I know how that sounds.

There’s this unspoken rule that wanting to be remembered is vain. That admitting you want your life to ripple outward instead of disappearing quietly makes you self-absorbed or ego-driven. We’re supposed to pretend we’re all totally fine being anonymous dust in the cosmic wind. That we don’t care if anyone remembers our names, our words, our ideas.

But I think that’s bullshit.

I think most people want to be known. They just don’t want to admit it because it feels embarrassing to want something that big. It feels safer to say, “I just want to be happy” or “I just want a quiet life.” And those things are valid. They really are. But I don’t think they cancel out the deeper, messier want underneath—the one that whispers, please let this mean something.

I’m writing this right before my thirty-fifth birthday, which feels relevant in a way I can’t fully explain without sounding dramatic. Thirty-five isn’t old, but it’s not young-young either. It’s an age that comes with this weird sense of accounting. Like your brain suddenly opens a spreadsheet and starts tallying things you’ve done versus things you thought you would’ve done by now.

Careers started. Hobbies abandoned. Versions of yourself that never quite made it past the draft stage.

At thirty-five, the noise quiets just enough for the existential questions to get louder. And mine has been circling this one idea for months now: What am I actually leaving behind?

Because time is rude like that. It keeps moving whether you’ve figured yourself out or not. Whether you’re ready or not. Whether you’ve done the thing you said you would or whether you’ve just talked about it to yourself at 2 a.m. for years.

And here’s the honest truth I don’t usually say out loud:

I want my words to outlive me.

I want someone—maybe years from now, maybe decades—to pick up something I wrote and feel seen. Or wrecked. Or understood. Or changed in some small, unmeasurable way. I want my thoughts to exist outside my head long after my brain is done spiraling through them.

I’m working on a book right now. And some days, it feels solid and real and inevitable, like of course this will exist in the world. Of course it’ll find readers. Of course it’ll matter.

Other days, it feels like a private delusion.

Like I’m just another person typing into the void, romanticizing a future that may never happen. A future where my book sits on shelves instead of in a half-finished folder. A future where I’m a “TikTok author” in the way people casually say now, like it’s both a joke and a prophecy.

I don’t know if that future is real. I don’t know if my book will ever be printed, let alone loved. I don’t know if my name will ever mean anything to anyone who doesn’t already know me.

But I like to believe it could.

And maybe that belief is the point.

Because wanting to be known isn’t about ego the way people think it is. For me, it’s about connection. It’s about the hope that my inner world—the thoughts I’ve carried, the questions I’ve wrestled with, the feelings I’ve drowned in and crawled back out of—might resonate with someone else’s.

It’s about proof that I didn’t just consume content and pay bills and age quietly.

I made something.

I tried.

There’s a vulnerability in admitting that you want more than just survival. That you want your existence to echo, even faintly. It means accepting that you care. That you’re invested. That you’re risking disappointment by hoping for significance instead of settling for adequacy.

And maybe that’s why people don’t say it out loud.

Because it opens you up to the possibility that you won’t be known. That you’ll pour your heart into things that never take off. That you’ll love your work more than the world ever does.

But I think the alternative—pretending you don’t want it at all—is worse.

I think it hollows you out slowly. Turns you into someone who downplays their own dreams until they forget they had them.

I don’t want that.

I want to be known for being honest. For saying the thing people think but don’t say. For writing like I’m talking to one person at midnight instead of performing for an audience. I want to be known for trying, even when it’s awkward and uncertain and painfully uncool.

I want to be known by my future self, too. I want to look back and recognize myself as someone who didn’t abandon her own voice just because it took time to be heard.

Thirty-five feels like a threshold. Not a deadline—just a moment where I stop pretending time is infinite. Where I start choosing what actually deserves my energy. Where I let myself want things without apologizing for them.

So yes. I want to be known.

Not by everyone. Not forever. Not in a way that costs me my peace.

Just enough to know that when I was here, I left something behind that proved I was paying attention.

That I felt deeply.

That I made meaning where I could.

That I didn’t let the fear of being seen keep me silent.

And if that makes me vain?

So be it.

I’d rather be honest than palatable.

to proof that I was here,

xoxo mj