You're not here just to be a clone. You're not here to be a copy. We have enough of those. You don't have to apply. You don't even have to go there to be absolutely yourself - real, here, now, on this planet.
You have to decide what is extraneous and what is central. There is always more to tell. If you want to have a finished product, at some point you have to say "enough."
I was fortunate enough to get a job at my alma mater, which brought me back to Indiana after being gone for twenty years. There is no way I would have written these poems had I not come back. They are 100% the product of the circumstances that led me home.
It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.