On Work and Happiness

It seems almost weekly that I find myself mired in doubt at work, wondering Am I really happy? Am I doing what I am meant to do? While some may say being faced with this constant doubt is not at all positive, I'd say that a certain measure of doubt and personal evolution keeps you evaluating and re-evaluating life, pushing your circumstances to where you want them to be. When you can make a change, you'll have done the reflection to really push the decision. And sometimes you are signed up for a contract and just have to have a little faith to motor through its duration.

Lately, I've had the urge to wander. With the very valuable learning experience/debacle of Harvard Career Discovery this past summer, I am more in control of who I am and what I need to thrive. At the moment my job is really great, interesting people, some cool assignments, great work environment, nice perks. It really is astonishing that it is my first job out of college. One would think that I would suffer a little more, work some awful jobs for menial pay, and really figure out what I want. But I am quite blessed in a way. I'm in a great place right out of college, what's wrong with that?

Ghandi once said Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is important that you do it. From day one, this isn't really the attitude we are taught. We are taught to have dreams and goals, to have an end result of what we want to be when we grow up. We seem to need dreams in order to fulfill them. But this goal-setting and dreaming only sets us up for defeat as we put our lives on hold in the hopes of living a fantasy. And in the end, if we never get there, we regret never having achieved that dream. All the while, we've lived lives, unpresent, waiting.

Certainly goals and evolution are worthwhile but it should never be done at the expense of living, really living. You should be able to achieve your dreams every day in small measure, sacrifice shouldn't be necessary, although sometimes temporarily it is.

I don't really believe in wanting or needing to do things. I feel the urge to change, change cities, change jobs. Part of me feels this need to wander, work as a barista, write, read, really plunge into things...

When it comes to jobs and careers we are so often told to follow our passion. I've grown to hate the word. It seems so one-minded. You won't always be loving and passionate of your work. There are days where you will struggle, days where you will hate it, days you will be unhappy. Isn't that just the natural progression of things? You should instead, invest in a career, live it, find that process that enriches you with its ups and downs. Accept all it has to offer and live the journey, live the everyday.

While there is part that feels wanderlust, part of me is just happy, happy with where I am here and now, knowing that somewhere in the future I will outgrow my present situation and then, only then, will the natural end and natural new beginning of things bloom.


Thanks for reading, I feel like its basically a ramble of the thoughts inside my mind at the moment...