Last week, I got into a mildly heated discussion about being happy. I, in my apparently wide-eyed views, believe that it is possible to create a job you commit 8+ hours to every day and still wake up and want to go to that same job. In other words: you can actually love what you do. This is not to say there are not periods of intense stress and frustration but overall, you love that job at least 70% of the time.
Life can be incredibly unfair with many variables beyond our reach. Yet I still chose to believe that we have the power to create the life we want; we just need some “dawsy” as my mom would say. True, my life is still a work in progress but I’ve set my path and I work towards it every day.
My debate partner thinks that I need to wake up and smell the roses. In the real world, 95% of people don’t get to “follow their dreams”. You work to live and support the ones you love and if you’re lucky you get a nice vacation just prior to a mental breakdown. Now, Lady Luck and I have had a pretty decent relationship but I don’t think she’d count me in her 5% of BFFs. Feeling disheartened I began to wonder, “Is being career happy possible or is it just a bunch of smoke and mirrors?”
The next day, I was browsing through LinkedIn (my newly appreciated social media network) and I came across an article about Creating A Job You Love. I thought, “Yes! I can hold off on heading to the psychiatrist a while longer.” There are many talks and books based on the same premise; Sheryl Sandberg, for example, comes to mind. But this article was unexpected, timely, and relatable. I might not be in control of everything but I can control my attitude to happy and positive. And if I can do that, no career is beyond reach.
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