You don’t have to prove anything to people from your old school. They’re not your audience anymore.

Those people remember one version of you, and it is easy to keep arguing with it for years, even when you never see them. You picture certain faces when something good happens, and you measure new things against an old hallway. Meanwhile they are busy with their own lives. The audience you keep performing for mostly does not exist anymore.

Catch who you are imagining the next time you picture being impressive. If it is somebody from a building you have not walked into in years, that is worth noticing. Do one thing this week purely because you want it, with none of them in the room.