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Calling Bullshit on Joy

Alysa Liu's gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics has everyone talking about joy — about following your bliss, about how the universe rewards you when you stop chasing the outcome. Maricella watched it and felt something more complicated.

In this minisode, she uses three figure skaters to explore what it actually looks like to perform for yourself versus performing for something external. Alysa Liu, whose comeback is being held up as proof that joy is enough. Amber Glenn, who moved from 13th to 5th after years of publicly battling anxiety, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation — and who still couldn't fully escape the pressure. And Ilia Malinin, the "Quad God" with 14 consecutive wins going in, who still got in his head.

What does it really mean to do something for joy? Is Alysa's story as simple as we're making it? And why is Amber Glenn's comeback — the one that didn't end in a medal — somehow the most moving thing Maricella watched all week?

If you've ever wanted to believe the "just do what you love" story but found yourself not quite buying it, this one might help you figure out why.

Topics: Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn, Ilia Malinin, Winter Olympics 2026, figure skating, joy vs. outcome, mental health, comparison, burnout, career, imposter syndrome

Transcript
Maricella Herrera:

Have you ever felt like the script you're

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following doesn't quite fit anymore?

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Then you're in the right place.

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I'm Maricella Herrera and I started.

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Shit I just quit my job after walking

away from a job I thought to find me?

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Forget the highlight reels.

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Here.

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We talk about the messy middle, the

doubts, the detours, and the chaos

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that come with rethinking who we are.

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Because the truth is, it was

never just about quitting a job.

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It was about questioning

everything I thought I knew.

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Hi everyone.

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Welcome to Sh*t I just quit

my job, minisode edition.

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I'm your host, Maricella Herrera.

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Thanks for joining me.

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It's time for our one-on-one where

I get to share some of the stuff

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that's in my head, and hopefully

it helps you a little bit.

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I've been really struggling with what

to say both in the minisode as in my

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writing in Substack, I posted something

that was pretty vulnerable a couple of

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weeks ago, and I think I still had a

little bit of a vulnerability hangover.

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I think there's been this aspect of me

trying to control what I share because.

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I wanna be open and honest and vulnerable,

but I also wanna appear like I have my

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shit together because eventually I would

like people to hire me, and sometimes

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I feel like those two can't coexist,

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which has become a little bit of an

obstacle and a barrier for me as I

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try to create more and make my way.

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But I'm here and the point is to show up.

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So I'm showing up and I'm gonna tell

you a little bit about my last week.

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It was my partner's birthday on Monday and

we had planned like little celebrations.

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Monday we went out for dinner and then

Thursday we went, to see a Broadway show,

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And he had decided to take off Friday from

work so that we could do something fun.

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And me, I obviously don't have

a nine to five, but I decided

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to block the whole day, so I

wouldn't have any calls that way.

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We would have a free day together But

it was gray, it was rainy, it was cold.

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So we actually decided we just wanted

to have a quiet day in, we ordered

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food, had a nice little brunch.

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turned on the Olympics and we were

just going to hang out and rest.

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It should have felt like a gift.

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But something started happening to

me, like there was something that

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started shaking like something that

I couldn't quite name, but that was.

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Brewing inside me.

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I was watching these women who

were doing extraordinary things

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at an extraordinary level,

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and something in me kind

of started tightening.

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I started fidgeting.

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I started grabbing my phone Something

started to feel like there was wrong.

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Like in my head, I started going,

why am I not doing anything?

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Why am I sitting here

watching TV on a Friday?

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Why

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am I not

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accomplishing something?

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And I grabbed my phone opened Substack

and I saw all of these notifications

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and posts and notes and, and I

subscribed to way too many Substack.

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I'll be honest, I think that that's

part of it because I see all of

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these posts come up and it feels like

everyone is doing and doing and doing.

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And then I see all of the

notes And there's this aspect

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of why am I not showing up?

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Why haven't I posted?

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Why haven't I said anything?

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why am I not doing something

and it feels so dumb.

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It was a spiral that I currently,

as I am talking about it, I

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feel as a massive weight and

tightening in my chest even now.

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It should have been a lovely day.

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Should have, and I know that I

have a lot of troubles with the

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shoulds, but that lovely day turned

into something's wrong with me.

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It turned into

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I'm not good.

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I not good, quote, unquote

good in many ways, right?

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Like in all the things, good

means I'm not dedicated.

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I'm not capable of working hard.

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I'm not even capable of taking a break

because when I take a break, I spiral.

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So what the fuck?

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And unless you've been living under

a rock, you probably know what,

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at least everyone in my feed and

everyone else is talking about since

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that women's free skate competition

and that is Alysa Liu and her

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incredible, incredible performance.

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I didn't know anything about Alysa.

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But you didn't need to know anything

about her to see the freaking joy in her

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face every time the camera caught her.

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That was when she did her

short program before, after it.

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That was when she was warming up,

taking pictures, and particularly

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throughout her full free skate.

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She looked happy.

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She looked like she was enjoying

the shit out of being there.

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Honestly, like she.

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It looked the way I wanted to feel,

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and her story just was even better

the more you learned about it.

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she was a prodigy She was 13 when

she, I can't remember if it was

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nationals or what, but she won this

competition and it's so cute to see

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the, the footage where like they

had to help her get up on the podium

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'cause she was this tiny little thing.

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She, it was killing it, but she was also

a kid and the sport was killing her.

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And the narrative has been, she decided

when she was 16 to quit, stop competing

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because the pressure and the lifestyle she

was living and the fact that that was her

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whole world skating was too much for her.

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And then she came back

two years after that.

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She started skating again, doing it.

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For herself she wasn't chasing medals.

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she's doing it because she loves it.

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People are talking about Alyssa Lu as

that someone who followed her bliss,

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someone who did this thing because

she loved it, and the universe finally

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conspired to give her what she wanted,

give her all the recognition because

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she was showing up for a place of

existing in the thing that she loves to

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do's.

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A beautiful story.

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Very inspirational story.

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I cried as I watched her look

so free and so joyful on ice.

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I cried as I saw her go into the

camera saying, that's what I'm

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fucking talking about, because that's

what I'm fucking talking about.

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That's what we all want, right?

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Like that's, that's the joy that we

all want and we all want, I think,

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to find that success within that joy.

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because I do think that even though

she says she wasn't chasing gold,

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I can't believe That inside her,

there wasn't a small part of her

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that wasn't craving that medal.

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That wasn't reaching for that medal.

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I'm sure there was.

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I think it's impossible if you're

giving it your all to not want that.

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Maybe it wasn't the most important thing.

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And I think that that is the lesson.

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But there was part of me that kept

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seeing her

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and wanting to call bullshit.

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I know, I'm sorry.

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But there was, there was this part of

me that kept seeing her and saying, nah,

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and I felt bad for it.

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I really did, because

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I want to believe

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because I think it's possible.

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But at the same time, I'm

looking at her and I am judging

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her from my own heaviness.

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I'm judging her through

my own messed up filter.

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I'm not in her head.

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I don't know.

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I'm calling bullshit.

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So something I'm not capable of knowing.

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Because I'm calling bullshit for

me because I know for me, I am

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not at that spot and I would love

to be at that spot, but I'm not.

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And I think that's jealousy, that's envy.

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And I have a very, very bad

relationship with that word.

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And

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that's comparison.

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Something I know I'm

dealing with all the time.

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Because like I said, as I was

watching this beautiful thing

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unfold, in between breaks, I was.

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Looking at Substack and comparing

myself to the people posting.

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I was having this bad habit

of telling myself, if you love

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something, why can't you do it?

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If you say you love something like

writing, why aren't you writing?

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If you say you love something like

podcasting, why isn't it growing?

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Because if you love something, and

if it's all about just showing up

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with joy and loving something, then I

guess I should be showing up right now

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Because if I'm not doing something,

then maybe I'm not loving it enough,

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and maybe if I don't love it enough.

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I will never succeed at it Like you can

see how messed up all these thoughts are.

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So I don't know if it's

making sense or not

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because why can't I do it?

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Am I lazy?

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What's wrong with my work ethic?

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I even got to the point of

telling myself, you're already

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failed because you're not a mom.

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Let this sink in.

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I'm not saying I failed because I'm not

a mom, like a failure because I don't

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have kids, because I don't believe that.

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But in my mind, I was already comparing

myself to the people who have kids work

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nine to five, do the side hustle, do

all these things, and since I already

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didn't have that one like point of

friction of having kids, everything

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else was already invalidated because

I already have that much more time

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than all these people who have kids.

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So why am I not doing.

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More than them.

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Instead of focusing on me on

what I was doing, I'm already

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comparing myself to everyone.

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I saw the 60 Minutes interview

with her and her father, and it

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made me think of how much more than

just saying she walked away from a

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sport that was killing her, really

came into what this young woman did.

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She calls her dad in that interview.

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The engine of her ambition,

or the presenter does, I think

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basically when she was very

young, he was the one pushing her.

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He says he spent probably a

million dollars on her skating.

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She says it was his business.

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It wasn't her business,

it was his business.

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Basically.

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He saw her talent, the coaches

saw her talent, people saw that

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she was a prodigy, but she still

was carrying someone else's dream.

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I've had many people on my podcast

talk about driving someone else's

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car or doing a job that wasn't really

theirs because it wasn't really the

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dream that they had for themselves.

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and I'll say a lot of it is first

generation immigrants, or kids

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of immigrants who feel this way.

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And Alysa Liu is a child

of an immigrant, a refugee.

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So she was carrying all of

this burden that wasn't hers.

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No wonder there was pressure.

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Of course, she felt that weight.

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She said that when COVID hit, she

actually wished that post COVID,

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the rink wouldn't open because

she didn't wanna do it anymore.

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She didn't wanna go back.

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She went back, she came in sixth,

and then that's when she quit

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and she deleted her Instagram.

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She went silent.

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She went in, she went into herself.

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She did things to get to know herself, to

try things, to find out what she loved.

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And that's really

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what made her be strong enough

to come back strong enough.

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And I don't mean strong enough in

the sense of like, oh, I'm strong.

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I'm gonna try this again,

regardless of what I have.

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No, I mean strong enough to say.

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What are my terms?

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What do I care about?

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How do I want to engage with this sport?

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She made

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an effort to establish boundaries

with her coaches, with her father.

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It was for her, not for them anymore.

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And that I think is

part of the difference.

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It's not just that she

was doing it for joy,

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she was doing it for her.

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there's one thing to say about seeing

people doing the thing they love

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with a face of joy and maybe managing

their nervousness well, like she did.

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And she says people have to explain

pressure to her because she doesn't

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know, doesn't feel it anymore.

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and trust me, I saw some videos of

her when she was younger and that

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little child's face conveyed pressure.

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She knew what pressure was at that moment.

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So it's not that she's never felt

it, it's that she's developed

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a better relationship with it.

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And what 60 Minutes interview made me

think differently was because it's one

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thing to see someone perform magically.

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Be happy.

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It's a very different thing to see

someone fall and to still smile.

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And in her interview you saw her fall

in practice over and over and she would

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smile and she would kind of say, oops.

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Or like something.

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But even with joy, even with the

happy face, even with doing this for

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yourself, you're still gonna fall.

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The host called it constant

pounding in pursuit of perfection.

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And I wrote that down because I

think there's two things here.

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The constant pounding part I think is

fair, but the in pursuit of perfection,

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I don't know if that is what she's doing.

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Maybe it is.

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Which then kind of brings

me to that like weird.

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Dissonant feeling of thinking

she's not going for gold.

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Because if I'm saying, if we're saying

that she's going constantly through this

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to get to pursue perfection, that means

she's really pursuing something external.

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It's not about the joy per se.

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It's about that external perfection.

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And I don't know if, if Alyssa

would've agreed with that or not.

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Like I don't know.

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But what she said, what Alyssa actually

said, I think that makes more sense

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than this pursuit of perfection.

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She said that she loves struggling

because it makes her feel alive.

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So she loves the falls because

it makes her feel alive.

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when she said that.

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I wrote it down and I found

myself saying, I want that.

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I want the struggle that

will make me feel alive.

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I don't wanna feel like despite the

struggle, but because of it, and

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I think that's the part that we're

not looking at in Alyssa's story.

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We're just seeing the happiness.

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People aren't talking

enough about Amber Glenn.

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When I watch the short program,

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I saw Amber

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skating beautifully until

she missed an element.

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Which got her zero points.

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So after the short program,

she was in 13th place.

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You could tell how devastated she was.

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She came out of the rink looking

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completely.

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Devastated crying.

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When asked, she said it was soul crushing.

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She said she had it.

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it just got away from her.

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She said her dreams had

been crushed into pieces.

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It was so sad, and I started hearing

how she was a mental health advocate

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and all these things, I started trying

to learn more about her and turns

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out her story is darker than just

the high level I, I learned, she had,

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I struggled with anxiety.

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Eating disorders, suicidal ideation.

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She was in a psychiatric facility in 2015.

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she struggled.

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She struggled to the point that there

are quotes of her saying she didn't

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wanna be on this earth anymore,

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and she spent some time

away from the sport.

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But like Alyssa, she came back.

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She came back strong, she won

three consecutive national titles.

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She

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shared her story because she believes that

there were all of these athletes fighting

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in silence and struggling in silence.

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she wanted to be a part of the

people who show, Hey, dude,

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it's not as rosy as it seems.

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and yes, we might struggle with

these things and yet there are

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ways for you to keep going.

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she's really

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an incredible story of resilience.

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She built these systems

to manage pressure.

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She started doing neurofeedback.

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She, uses this mantra,

believe and breathe.

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Believe and breathe.

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She has done a lot of work on herself.

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Both of them have right, Alyssa and

Amber, different type of works that work.

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Amber's coach has a heart monitor, a heart

rate monitor that they're looking at so

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that they can call Amber when her level

spike because they really want to make

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sure that she's healthy, that she's okay.

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She talks about her support system,

like you know, that this woman has in

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put incredible effort into making sure

that she has the supports she needs

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and at the Olympics.

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The short program didn't go well and

she came back two days later and I

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remember saying to my partner, fuck,

like, I don't know if I could do it.

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Like if I knew I was that far behind when

I had tried so hard and worked so hard

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how do you come back to a performance

to try to give it your all knowing that

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it's gonna be insanely hard for you to

get anywhere near where you want it to.

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But boy, did Amber come back.

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She skated.

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One of the best programs of her life.

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That's how she described it.

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It was insane to see.

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She came back with planning a

triple axle that I think only an

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one other contestant in the whole,

free skate program was gonna try.

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So she had a really hard technical skate.

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She gave it her all.

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When she finished, you could

see the happiness in her face.

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She looked like she was enjoying

it, going back to this part of joy.

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And not only did she fucking kill

it, she moved from 13th place.

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She finished in fifth place.

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Okay.

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No, she didn't meddle,

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but she leaped from where she was

and she kept that lead for a while.

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She showed up

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regardless of joy or no joy.

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She showed up.

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And here's the thing about Amber too.

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It's that I kept thinking through the

programs it is somehow so much more

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inspiring than anything else to see

that leap that she made, to see her have

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shown up when things were not going well.

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To see her openly talking about her sexual

identity, her mental health, her struggles

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to see her living out loud, not hiding,

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not pretending that she

didn't feel the pressure.

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Because she could have, she could

have been like, no, I'm good.

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And of course, probably no one

would've believed her because you

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can tell that she was nervous,

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but she owned it.

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And yes, unfortunately this

pressure still got to her.

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It got in her head

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because she was still competing

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for something external.

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Because even after Alyssa's win, Amber

said, if you consider your mental

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health and treat it right, great things

can happen that quote is also very

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interesting because even as she is

talking about Alyssa and how amazing

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it was, she's still thinking about

the great things that can happen.

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It's still outcome adjacent,

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and I'm not poo-pooing on Amber.

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Trust me.

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I like am so inspired by Amber,

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but she's still performing for something.

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I think I never would've made

that connection if I hadn't

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seen her performing at the gala.

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And this is the same for Ilia

Mali nin for the Quad, God,

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when they performed at the gala.

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There.

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They seemed happy there.

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They seemed powerful.

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They weren't performing for anything else.

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I don't think at that point they

were performing for themselves.

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Amber isn't a cautionary tale.

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I'm not saying this as like, oh,

you should not think of the outcome.

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I wish I could say that I wish I

could be Alyssa, but to me, Alyssa

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is really an aspirational model.

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Amber's a reality.

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I feel like I'm living

in most of the time.

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Most of the time I'm living in

Amber's world where I am still

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conditioned to look at the outcome.

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Where I'm still conditioned

to doubt myself.

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There's another interesting

thing about these two skaters.

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One thing I loved seeing, When

Alyssa came out with her group,

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Amber had already skated.

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and Alyssa was looking for her.

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She was saying hi to people, but

she was looking for Amber, asking

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about Amber trying to find Amber

to celebrate her free skate because

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Amber had done so amazingly well.

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And these women, God is

it lovely to see them.

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It was like, I still te tear up

right now as I'm thinking about it,

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how they were supporting each other.

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from how Alyssa was looking for Amber,

but also the big hug Alyssa gave to, the

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final skater who won bronze I don't know.

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You could see these

moments of camaraderie, and

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I'm mentioning this

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because it was very genuine,

And I read this in a Time

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magazine piece on Amber Glenn.

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it's kind of two different portions,

but I'm, I'm gonna read them.

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'cause I think it describes the

world in which these skaters grew up,

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and it says The anxiety was fueled

by the sports competitive structure,

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which pits athletes against each other

in a constant cycle of comparisons.

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As participants in a judge sport,

skaters are trained at a young age

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to learn that everything about them,

their appearance, their body shape,

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their costumes and their skating style

are open for criticism and praise.

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For young female skaters in particular,

there is an ideal that they strive

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for the image of the perfect ice

princess without a single flaw.

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In a different part of this

article, Amber Glenn is quoted

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competing at local competitions.

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She says, felt like life or

death, and it didn't help that

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her entire world was skating.

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:

So everyone around her fed off

the same mentality of striving for

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:

perfection and never being satisfied.

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That was our normal.

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Our coaches would pit us against

each other, and at 10 years

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old, we were forced to have this

competitiveness and comparison.

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It's so toxic.

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Obviously I did not grow up skating, so

I've never been part of this world, but

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I do know this feeling.

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this is the same feeling I get

when I open LinkedIn and I see what

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everyone else has accomplished.

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It's the same feeling I get when I see

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how other people are building their

brand and their business, and I'm not.

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I'm still rooting for them.

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Don't get me wrong.

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I am, but I still have that

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impulse to compare myself, to check

where I am and I, the silliest thing

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is we might not even be competing.

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Like it's not only that we're not

competing because there's boundless

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:

opportunity for everything, but probably

not even playing the same sport.

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And yet that's where my mind goes.

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Because that's what I've been

conditioned to, to this competition,

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but these women, there they are.

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They were technically pitted against

each other, and yet they're supporting

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each other and rooting for each

other, and so proud of each other.

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I think no one's talking about

that part enough because they

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:

were able to get over that.

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they were not just able to get over the

pressure, although surely for some of

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:

us, and Amber and the, the pressure's

still there, but they were able to get

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:

through that comparison, maybe not fully,

but to a point where they found support.

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:

In the 60 Minutes interview with Alyssa,

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I found something that was

really beautiful The interviewer

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:

asked her if she considered

herself an artist or an athlete.

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:

It was something like that.

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The interview happened

before the Olympics.

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At that point, she said artists And that

was interesting to me because the way

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I understood this, from what she said

is that she views these competitions

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:

as an opportunity for performance.

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And I'm not talking about performance

of like performing at a certain level.

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I'm talking about artistry

as performance, right?

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Like she sees this as an

opportunity for her to perform.

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On a stage,

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which

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:

is different from the framing

of competition, because if

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we're all performing on a stage,

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:

the better we all perform, the better.

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:

This beautiful thing we're

creating is gonna happen, right?

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Like it's gonna be even better.

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:

But if we're competing, then we're

really pitting against each other.

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:

But there's room for beauty, there's

room for beauty from everyone.

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:

For Alyssa was her art, and sure,

her art demanded perfection from her,

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She wasn't thinking about the rest.

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She was thinking about herself.

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I hope she keeps honoring

her artistry in that way

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because I think I am still not there.

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Definitely not there.

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I haven't found, I guess I don't believe

myself as an artist enough to feel

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that I'm just performing as an artist

Versus performing for an outcome.

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:

Figure skating, I guess, showed

me quite a bit this weekend.

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In these last Olympics, you had Alyssa

who came in with all the joy and all the

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freedom she still had to put in the work.

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Then Amber, who came in with all

the structure and all the support.

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:

But she still wasn't free.

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:

and then you had the quad God who came in

with all the dominance and expectations.

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He's won 14 competitions in a row,

and that still didn't protect him

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:

because he still got in his head.

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We are all human

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:

and we can rehearse as

much as we want and we can

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nail the moves as many times as we can,

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:

but we really do have to quiet

the voices in our head first.

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:

learning more about these skaters,

not just watching them, but learning

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:

more about them and sitting with.

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My own feelings on Friday and

Saturday and Sunday and now today.

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:

I think a few things kind of also

cracked in me as I think of the 60

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:

minutes segment It also made me think

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:

the expectations that they had

on her from when she was a kid.

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Same with Amber, and same with the

massive expectations everyone had the

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:

quad got going into these Olympics.

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It triggered something for me.

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'cause I remember people telling

me my whole life that I was

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smart, that I'd do great things

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:

and I think I still carry that

voice, the voice that says

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:

that I wasted my potential.

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The voice that says that

I wasted all my education.

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:

'cause oh boy, was their

money poured into that thing

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that I've wasted all of

the support I've been given

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:

and I keep waiting for my comeback.

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:

I see their stories and think,

oh shit, look, they came back

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:

and did this great thing and I,

maybe I should try and do that.

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:

But I think the point here is that

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the only way that I'm going to do

that is if I come back because I want

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:

to, not because I think I should.

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If I come back because

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I love it because I want to do

it because I want to show up.

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:

I did call bullshit on Alyssa, but it

really wasn't calling bullshit on her.

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:

I was calling bullshit on myself, on that.

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:

Part of me that still believes that

joy can't be real without the gold.

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:

I think I'm still in Amber's

camp right now, still feeling

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:

the pressure, still performing

for something outside of myself.

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:

But like Amber, I'm still

doing the work, the inner work.

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I want to believe

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:

in following your bliss and

following your joy and that the

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:

universe will find you once you do.

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:

And I do believe that sometimes

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:

I need a reminder for when I don't, and

maybe, maybe just maybe playing MacArthur

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:

Park and watching Alyssa spin on the ice

on her knees will be enough of a reminder

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:

because as far as I know right now,

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:

she's the inspiration.

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We all need me included.

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That's it for today.

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Thanks for listening.

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:

If you like this episode, hit follow or

subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

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:

And if it made you think, feel

something or yell, same out loud,

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:

leave a quick rating or review.

513

:

It really helps.

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:

If you didn't like it, just

pretend this never happened.

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:

You can also subscribe on

Substack for updates and extras.

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:

I'd love to hear from you.

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:

Comes say hi on Instagram at

Quit my job pod, or email me

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:

at quit my job pod@gmail.com.

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:

See you next time.

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Sh*t I Just Quit My Job
For anyone navigating doubt, detours, and the messy search for something real.

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Maricella Herrera