Your town’s expectations are a starting line, not a finish line. You’re allowed to run past them.

Places develop a sense of what is realistic, assembled from what people around there have actually done. That picture is accurate about the past and says nothing binding about you. It turns into a ceiling only when it gets read as a description of what is possible rather than a record of what has happened so far. Somebody always goes first.

Find one example of a person who went further, from anywhere, and look at the actual steps they took. Talk to someone outside your immediate circle this month. Widening the sample changes what seems normal.