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Who Are You When There’s Nothing After Your Name? · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine your name written on a blank white piece of paper.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm picturing it.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And right next to it,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: there's just this solid black line, like an empty space just waiting to be filled.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right, like a fill in the blank.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: for decades,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: we completely exhaust ourselves trying to earn the right words to put on that line.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Things like director, founder, partner, doctor.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to solve those.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever felt like you're simply playing a role?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're just becoming whatever your current life chapter requires
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: while secretly wondering who you actually are underneath it all?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is such a heavy question and honestly a terrifying one for a lot of people.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the core of our deep dive today.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're unpacking this incredibly intimate, deeply human piece of writing by Julia Callas.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, from her substack, which is called Just Julia.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the article is titled The Empty Space After My Name.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to say,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: the artwork for her platform promises explorations into identity,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: confidence, reinvention, and the lives we become.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this piece just completely delivers on that promise.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: It really does.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important to note for you,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: the listener,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: right up front,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: this isn't going to be your typical,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know, five steps to career success kind of deep dive.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, definitely not.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: We are really looking at the psychological reality of what happens when
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: the performance of adulthood just stops.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We spend our whole lives trying to earn the titles that go after our names.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens when those titles start to feel like a cage?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: That is exactly the framing we need
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: because Julia centers this whole exploration around
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: that specific visual Julia blank space.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And she talks about how paralyzing that empty space becomes
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: when you spend your entire adult life plugging a profession or a company name
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: into it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which most of us do.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: We all do it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And to illustrate this, she shares this vivid memory from her childhood in Brazil.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, right.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: With her father.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Her father used to make her this offer.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said if she got into a good public medical university, he would buy her any car she wanted.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty massive incentive.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, seriously.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: But neither she nor her sister took him up on it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't become doctors.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: But now at 38 years old, she admits something in the article that almost embarrasses her.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: She catches herself envying this imaginary alternate universe version of herself.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Julia.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Dr. Julia.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to pause on this imaginary Dr.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Julia for a second because we really need to dissect what's going on here.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: On the surface...
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it sounds like a classic case of midlife career regret.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, no, I have to challenge that immediately.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I read that section, my first thought was also like, is she just bored?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Does she actually want to walk the halls of a hospital and practice medicine?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: But she explicitly says she does not want to practice medicine.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: OK, so if it's not about the actual medical job itself,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: what is the psychological pull of this alternate reality?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, unpack that.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the cognitive load of that interaction is basically zero.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Society instantly knows which box to put her in.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: They assume her socioeconomic status.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: They assume her general values.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's no complicated explanation needed.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: That makes so much sense.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what Julia is envying isn't the stethoscope.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: She's envying the relief of not having to constantly explain
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: or justify her existence to the world.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, she craves that shorthand.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: She knows what she is in that scenario.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that craving for a simple shorthand is so powerful,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: especially when you contrast it with the reality of her actual life,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: which is incredibly fluid and, frankly, messy.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is a beautifully messy, highly adaptable reality.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because she didn't choose this straightforward path, I mean, let's look at her actual resume.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Let's hear it.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's lived in four different countries.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's worked internationally.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: She built partnerships,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: negotiated,
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: sold, managed markets, and, you know, adapted to entirely different cultures.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, she became a wife and a mother.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sprawling life of many lifetimes, really.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Which raises this really uncomfortable paradox, I think.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: We are constantly told that being highly adaptable is the ultimate professional superpower.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's so praise.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: But at what point does reading the room and fulfilling expectations cause you
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: to completely lose the plot of what you actually want?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that is the trap.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: The superpower becomes a trap.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: How so?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Julia lists out all these specific versions of herself in the text.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's the Brazilian girl from a small town trying to fit in.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's the New Zealand exchange student discovering a whole new world.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then Italian Julia learning to navigate a culture that isn't entirely her own.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then professional Julia.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Professional Julia who became incredibly adept at belonging wherever she was needed.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like a master chameleon.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: The corporate world practically begs you to be a chameleon,
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: but she reaches this haunting realization,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: and it's the core question of the whole piece.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: She asks, if I don't want to be what I've been, who am I?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Which of those versions ever actually learned how to belong to herself?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: That hits hard,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: because if you spend your entire life changing your colors to perfectly match
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: the branch or the leaf or the environment.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: What color are you when someone places you in an empty white room?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: You have absolutely no idea.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: None.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: You get so exceptionally good at answering the question,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: what do you need me to be,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: that the neural pathways for asking what do I want to be just completely atrophy.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is terrifying.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it perfectly transitions into this profound contradiction she brings up later in the text.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the visibility line.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: She writes...
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be visible and I'm terrified of being seen.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I had to read that sentence three times.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is so vulnerable.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to unpack the mechanics of that terror because I think it's deeply tied
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: to the loss of the corporate shield.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: The corporate shield, yes.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Explain that for the listeners.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when you operate inside established structures,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: your job title and the company name act as psychological armor.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you pitch a campaign and it gets rejected, your ego is protected.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: They aren't rejecting you, the human being, they're rejecting the director of marketing.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: A title absorbs the blow.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Precisely.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you step out on your own,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: the moment you try to create something with just your name on it,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: You lose the armor.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: You strip it off entirely.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The distance between your work and your self-worth collapses.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if people reject what you create, it feels indistinguishable from a direct rejection of you.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why she's terrified of being seen.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Visibility without armor is an existential threat.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, it isn't just the faceless market she's afraid of.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: She talks about this imagined chorus of judgment.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the chorus.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's so relatable.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: The moment she contemplates building something of her own,
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: she is flooded with anxiety about what her parents will think or her friends,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: her husband, her former colleagues.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: She pictures them looking at her and thinking, who does she think she is?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Who does she think she is?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what's so fascinating is
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: that these loud criticisms are almost completely invented in our own heads.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: We project our own deep insecurities onto the people who knew an earlier version of us.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody has actually said these things to her face.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: We basically ventriloquize our own self-doubt through the mouths of our friends and family.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great way to put it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: We use the memory of who we used to be to police who we're trying to become.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there's a really interesting paradox here about aging that I want to bring up.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's the paradox?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Julia is in her late 30s, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: By your late 30s or 40s,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: you have almost four decades of hard evidence
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: that you can figure difficult things out.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Very true.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: She's survived moves, career pivots, language barriers.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So why is it that having a massive track record
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: of success can actually make experimentation feel more dangerous than
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: when we were 20 and had literally nothing to lose?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's such a good point.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you're 20, you're a blank slate.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Society expects you to stumble.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: But by 40, you've accumulated so much.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have a reputation, expectations, a network, all this reputational baggage.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sunk.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sunk costs.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Experimentation doesn't feel like playing in a sandbox anymore.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like taking a sledgehammer to a fully constructed building just to see
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: if you like a different floor plan.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: The states feel catastrophic.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So naturally,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: when high achievers hit this wall of fear,
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: they try to solve it the way they've solved every other problem in their lives.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: They try to outthink it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: They turn to self-development.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Julia talks about doing everything the modern self-improvement industry tells you to do.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: She journals.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: She meditates.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: She listens to podcasts.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: She analyzes her childhood patterns.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: She identifies her wounds.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But doing all that work hasn't given her the answer.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads to probably the most powerful sentence in the entire source material.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding yourself and becoming yourself are not the same thing.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: We really need to spend some meaningful time on that distinction because that gap,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: the distance between insight and transformation is where
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: so much personal development just goes to die.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredibly frustrating.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can sit down with a journal and figure out the exact origin of a limiting belief.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can know exactly why you behave a certain way.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You trace it all the way back.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then you wake up the next morning and you still feel like the exact same person.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Insight is not transformation.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's really not.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think about it like this.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Self-awareness is like reading the blueprint of a house.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I like that.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know exactly where the faulty wiring is.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know which walls are load-bearing.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: But reading the blueprint protects you from the dust and the noise and
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: the physical exhaustion of actually remodeling.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Becoming requires you to actually swing the hammer.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And swinging the hammer is messy.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It requires real world action.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: It requires experimentation and failure and honestly a lot of embarrassment.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pure intellectual understanding protects us from that awkwardness.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But to become someone new you have to allow yourself to behave differently before
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: the new identity actually feels natural.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And for Julia...
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: A massive part of
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: that messy remodeling process involves untangling her incredibly complicated
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: relationship with ambition.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: This part is so crucial.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is because she refuses to accept this false choice.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: She gets very honest about her specific desires.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: What does she say she wants?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she says she wants the business.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: She wants the financial independence, the beautiful hotels, the great clothes, the planes.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: She wants the feeling of being powerful in a room.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: But in the exact same breath, she says she also wants depth.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: She wants meaningful conversations and personal development and to do work
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: that actually changes something inside people.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to talk about how society and honestly self-help culture in particular...
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Often forces women into a false dichotomy here.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: The underlying message is always that you have to pick a lane.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can either be ambitious and materially successful or you can be spiritual,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: deep and meaningful.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you can't be both.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: The unspoken rule is that wanting financial power somehow makes your desire
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: for depth hypocritical.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which is so toxic.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Julia passionately rejects that.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: She concludes that maybe authenticity isn't about looking at all your desires
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: and picking the one that's most socially acceptable.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe authenticity is having the courage to admit that all of those desires,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: the power and the depth, belong in the exact same person.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: She refuses to choose.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that refusal to choose is really resonating with people.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the comments on her Substack post,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: you see that this isn't an isolated feeling at all.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Community validation is amazing.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a comment from a reader named Alice DiPietro that I thought was brilliant.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the wedding story.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Alice talks about attending a wedding where she didn't know anyone.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And for the first time, she was there without her professional title.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't have her corporate shield.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she describes feeling so liberated by just being Alice that it made her want
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: to go figure out who that person actually is.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the comment from Juliana Watts, which adds this whole other layer.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: She met Julia in Estonia, I think.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: In Estonia.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Juliana compares this entire process of identity evolution to an endless video game.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: That analogy is so good.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: She says you put in the work,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: you face your fears, you finally think you figured your identity out, and then boom.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: You level up.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: You level up.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And leveling up just brings a much more challenging level.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: The map changes.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to start the process of becoming all over again.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Which means that empty space after your name isn't something you just fill once
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: and forget about.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's an ongoing process.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings us back, really, to you, the listener.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've traced this whole journey today from hiding behind the certainty of titles to
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: the messy,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: brave act of figuring out who you are when nobody is applauding
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: and you aren't worried about looking ridiculous.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And building on Julia's concluding lines,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want to leave you with a final slightly provocative thought.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: I love this.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Lay it on them.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: We spend so much time and energy obsessing over the words that go into
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: that empty space after our names, our jobs, our roles, our achievements.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But before you rush to fill that blank space again,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: do you actually know the person whose name comes before it?