I started writing this post a month and half ago and never got the chance to finish. It’s been a while since I read the book, but today, as I walked back to my cube with 2 traffic tickets after a day governed by Murphy’s law, I smiled and thought, wow, I’m still happy after all these things that have been going wrong in my life. For that I am proud, because before you start out on any grand plans to change the world, you should at least be able to make yourself happy.
I think I have a habit of devouring books that I like, and this one is no exception. The personal story of Tony Hsieh, CEO of the wildly successful Internet shopping company Zappos, the book provides a humorous account of his roller coaster ride career, as well as important lessons he gathered along the way. More than anything else, it was his personality that shined through, and makes me think, wow, it would be awesome to know this person, learn from him, and be his friend. I’m not planning on moving to Vegas to stalk Tony Hsieh, or leave my cushy job to join Zappos, but I will write down a few things that made me pause and ponder.
The book is divided into three sections, roughly corresponding to different stages of Tony’s career. He starts with searching for profit, then when he achieved that, he began to search for both profit and passion, and finally, he added purpose to that list. For a lot of people, they work their entire lives for profit, and never get past that stage. For others, they find their purpose early in life and never cared too much for the profit aspect. For the rest of us, we take life one step at a time, and go through the same process of looking for profit, passion and purpose.
When I was in elementary school, I dreamed of becoming a pop star. If successful, it would have been the perfect career that would give me profit, fit my passion, and give me a sense of purpose. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I realized quickly that the chances of success in the pop star world is rather slim. In high school, I became a huge fan of John Grisham. I shall be a lawyer with a conscience, I decided. I had slightly more confidence in my brains than my beauty, and it was at least an achievable goal. That goal continued into college, where my passion for law soon faded after a few business law classes and some thorough research. As graduation approached, I haven’t a clue what my purpose should be, nothing I was particularly passionate about, and honestly, I would just be happy to find a job.
I’ve had an eclectic collection of jobs since I first started working. Selling greeting cards at the mall, designing online e-learning courses at school, teaching English to kids in Japan, programming online marketing research surveys, managing accounting for a home grown startup, investigating financial fraud. I was happy at each one of my jobs, but only for a while. Then I’d get bored, my performance would deteriorate, and I would jump when the next opportunity came along.
I’ve been happy at my current job for a while, even though I constantly wonder if I’m going in the right direction. I enjoy the challenges, and look forward to learning something new at each company, but there’s something missing, and I recently realized it’s the fact that I don’t necessarily belong anywhere. The transient nature of my work makes it difficult for me to get attached to what I do, and I can’t be passionate about just making more money for my firm. Having figured that out, I at least know that my next step is finding a place where I can find a sense of pride in seeing something grow, and build relationships that last more than 6 months to a year.
And that’s as much time as I want to spend thinking about my career for now. In a certain sense, that seems to be the only aspect of my life that’s still going well, unlike everything else.
I don’t know if I should be more upset, or sad, or angry. The people who cause me the most pain are the people I love most, who’ve supported me through the worst and cheered for me at my best. And I realize that everything that’s been happening is just because they are looking for their own happiness. I think I’ve always been happier than them, and it’s really not because of what I have or what I’ve done. Some of it may be innate, but most of it is just having spent enough time conversing with myself and figuring out what to expect from the world versus from myself. It’s not that I don’t understand how they feel, I really do, because I’ve been there. I wish there was some way I can help them, but I realize I can’t teach other people to be happy. I can deliver a few moments of happiness, and the rest is up to them. Just like, I can wait for wonderful surprises from other people, or I can just.be.happy.
Things that made me happy this week:
– Waking up to the alarm because I was tired from running with my roomies last night
– Sitting in the sun for an afternoon break with JT
– Heading to dinner at my favorite ramen place with Mina
– A great breakfast selection
– Empanadas with fun interns for lunch
– The beautiful weather
– Getting parking tickets instead of being pulled over for driving in carpool lane (so much more expensive!)
– Having awesome friends visiting the next two weekends
– Seeing a sticky note left by an old friend at my cube
– Mavs won!
– Going up to Twin Peaks at night, even though it was completely foggy and we couldn’t see anything!
– Seeing so many wonderful friends and family in Dallas over the weekend
– Finishing putting together my dressers!
– Salted caramel ice cream… yum!
– Getting a new backpack
– Watching Billy Elliott from orchestra seats then running into Jared and his gf
– Going out to a party without getting drunk and still having so much fun
– My new nickname, Daisy
– Booking a crazily expensive ticket to Vegas
– Being able to tell people I’m doing good and really mean it
– No traffic!
– Roomies who randomly walk into my room and lay on my bed to chat
– My awesome sister who’s grown up to be so lovely
– Just keep swimming… just keep swimming…
– New clothes 😀
– Phone date for the weekend with Renee
– I’m just happy 🙂
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