I'm in the unhappy group. I'm stucked in my current job for more than three years without any prospect of promotion or internal transfer. I've been looking around but there's been no news. I tried not to compare but I can't help to notice that most are doing better in their career paths. Also, I'm going through a family problem which as much as I'd like to share, it is just too personal to do so. It's been tormenting me since I was a teenager and it just got worse recently. I hope it can finally be resolved by this year. Of course it's not all gloom and doom. I should be able to pay off my debt by March and I'm in good health.
Guys and Gals, I know it's easy to say and hard to do, but be happy you have your health because you never know how good life is (even if you think it's bad) until you have to deal with health problems.. I'm happy with my life.. I've been out of college a few years have a great job (with tons of free Rockets tickets from my boss ) and a nice house.. I hope to be engaged soon to my girlfriend of 7 years who is getting her PhD in psychology so all in all life is good and I couldn’t be more happy.. I feel very lucky that my life turn out this good that early for me.. My future goals in life are getting married, having kids and retire by 45 to spend more time with my family.. After all those are met I feel like I have accomplished everything I wanted in life.. Minus owning tons of old cars like Jay Leno Keep in mind, it's not always about money.. be happy with what you have and you will live a much more happy life, in a way your own mind is the only thing that keeps you from being happy..
I'm about 95% happy right now, which is up there for me. Job - happy cuz I can do it in my sleep and I make really good scratch, regardless of the fact that there are no promotions or significant raises coming in the near future. It pays for everything I want and everything I do at night, plus I have plenty leftover for investing. Car - Lexus pimp ride rolling party palace is stylin' and running fine House - love the stationary party palace, and the property value keeps going up Music - very busy with my two regular projects and helping out on a new one Only two things I am less than happy about right now are my parents' health and the fact that I would rather have one fulltime girlfriend rather than playing 44 year old musician slut all the time. BUT...all in all life is good right now.
Wow, I have been looking for one of you guys...see I have a dog that needs to be walked. I'll pay $10 a day. Sorry, just trying (unsuccessfully) to be funny. Keep in mind this is coming from a "currently stalled out due to other life conditions but may one day return" humanities PhD candidate.
Be thankful. (you have more to be thankful for than you realize) Help others. (you are needed) Keep life simple. (relationships are most important) Things will be alright. Thanks for posting this, you seem to be a very honest and sincere person. Praying for you today, there is a Light at the end of the tunnel.
Manny, If you are unhappy about some things then you need to make some changes. They may need to be where you are at now, but it may be that you need to move. Moving may not be all great, or all bad. It can be a bit of both. I'll give you an example. I moved from H-town to NY, and lived there for 10 years. Some friends of mine also moved, so I always had a support group, and we met new people as well. But life in NY was hard without a ton of money. The subways got tiresome, everything was expensive, along with a lot of great people, there were a lot of annoying ones. But mostly I loved NY. I was happy I had moved, and struggled through the hard and incovenient parts. It definitely wasn't 'comfortable' but it was fun and exciting. I got married, and some of my writing got produced, I got some good reviews, started making some great new friends, and we were just exploring where we would go career and artisitically. It was the closest I had come while in NY to doing exactly what I wanted to do. But there were some differences, and my wife was wanting to move to LA and had some great career opportunities in LA, and I figured I could try and do my own thing in LA. It would suck because I wouldn't be working with my friends, but I knew I would keep in touch with them etc. Anyway that was move number 1. It was almost all good. I started getting tired of the incovenience of not having a lot of money in NY, and the struggle that each day is. If I hadn't moved when I did, I would had to have downgraded my NY stay. I get to LA. The weather is great. I take up surfing. I have a car, and go to drive-thrus, find places to park, swim in the ocean, I've taken up surfing. I can go camping at any of the year, I can drive less than 10 minutes and hike around rocky hills, and canyons etc. There is room. Unlike NY the grocery stores are big, with room for carts to pass easily on the same aisle. There is a better selection of food, and produce. But there is a bad part as well. My creative endeavors have been up and down, and it is like I had to start over from scratch out here. I have made a few friends, but none that really share the same love for the creative arts. I don't have a group of friends, to play basketball with, regularly. All of that is frustrating. I'm still glad I moved from NY. I can't see myself ever moving back there, but it created some new problems, and made me realize how much I miss some of the other parts. Anyway I just try and focus on what I can do with what I have. If I don't have the friends to play basketball regularly, I try and swim more, or surf more. I also try and talk friends into moving out here. There are a lot of annoying people out here, and some really nice ones as well. I think if you move it might be a mixed bag, but it might also be a step you need to take. Either way, good luck with everything. I guess it is just a long winded way of saying that moving may be good
Yea, I know what you mean, FB. But let me ask you something: if living in NY is very expensive (which I knew that before your post), isn't living in LA just as expensive? I know at my company when people get relocated to California, the company has to pay them like THREE times what they are already making because the damn cost of living is so high, lol.
Take it from a guy in his mid-30's you got a long ass way to go. So don't stress too much about it now Kam. I can tell you if I had the perspective when I was 22 that I do now I would be a lot more happy. Manny; I feel for you and can sympathize. 2005 was a very strange year for me with some ups and lots of down. 2006 so far has started fairly poorly with work being really down for my company and Rox in a deep slide. Even with all of that though I'm not really unhappy. I've come to the point in my life where happiness and its pursuit doesn't seem as important and all I'm trying to do is maintain an even psychological keel. I'm trying to accept the wheel of Karma as is and that sometimes things are going to be up and sometimes things are going to be down and there's no need to really get very down when things are looking bad and shouldn't get very up when things are going great. Largely at this point I accept that things are going to change.
Manny, do you think your unhappiness revolves around whether or not you are in a relationship? That may be it, and you are thinking its your job or location when really most happiness or unhappiness for a man revolves around one thing, a woman.
As cliche as it sounds I've found that money isn't the most important thing. In the late 90's I did the dot.com rollercoaster ride where in 1999 it was looking like I could retire in a few years to 2001 where I was scraping to make car payments. Money can make things easier but what I've found is when the money is flowing in I'm working so much and obsessing about how to keep the cash flow going that I can't really enjoy it. When the money isn't flowing in I have time and while I might not be able to up and travel around the world or buy a Lexus I can do other things like help people out in disaster zones, work on art and consider other business and intellectual ideas. Money comes, money goes and its not worth obsessing about.
Money cannot buy you happiness. It just enables you to be able to afford more expensive forms of misery.
LA is expensive but housing isn't as expensive as NY, and you get more for your money compared to NY. You can be more comfortable having little money in LA than in NY. In NY taking the subway is good if it isn't rush hour or in the summer. Summer's in NY have humidity like Houston, but you are forced to be exposed to it. Waiting for the subway has no ventilation at all. It is hot and stuffy and you are creammed together with people who are also hot and sweaty. The city smells bad, and a lot of the buildings are old and don't have AC. Whether by subway or car, you will have to do a lot of walking in the hot humidity, and after years of that, it is tiresome. It wouldn't be bad for a vacation, or even for a few years, but after awhile it wears on you. In LA you are in a car, the weather is better, and there is more escape from it when it is bad. Plus in LA you are very close to various exposures to Nature. In NY you have to rent a car, and drive away. In LA I am close to the beach, mountains, deserts, forrests, etc. I see it all the time, and it is a short drive to access it. The radio here is the best I've ever heard. The station Indy 103 has a 2 hour show hosted by Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols, they have other great shows on that station, and I enjoy it a lot. It is just a higher quality of life here than in NY. I loved NY but I guess I was just getting too old to go through that grind. NY with money, and I don't mean middle class, I mean a lot of money, would be a different story. Plus I finally bought my own place. It isn't my dream home, but it is comfortable, and I hope to be able to sell it before too long and buy something better. But the great thing is that because the LA housing market is so expensive, even if I sold my place now and moved to TX, I could buy a nice home, and some land. That is what I'm going to do when I retire. Sell whatever I have in LA, and use the money to buy a nicer place in TX which I can do because of the difference in the two housing markets. But sometimes it is hard not having a regular group of friends, to see music shows with, to trade music with, to play poker, to watch a big Rockets game, to play basketball with to collaborate creatively with, etc. That part still hasn't happened out here, but on the whole it was still a good change for me.
Probably but I say that in about 2 or 3 months if I am still not in a relationship, it won't be so bad. I mean it runs in peaks and valleys for me. And right now I am in sorta of a valley period.
I was really happy up until a few days ago. You should have asked me last week. I'll get back there eventually though.
Well after working on average around 70-80 hours a week with peaks of 90-100 or so, I quit my job last week. I'm happy. I am now semi-retired and really just goof off all day... but I'm getting bored. So I'm looking for a job again... Manny, get away from the silly "company man" attitude. Your goal in life is to get to do what you want as quickly as you can. Working 8-12 hour days is not conducive to that - unless that's actually what you want to do, of course. My goal in life was to not be working "for the man" as quickly as possible and not need to have a job as early as possible. I'm pretty happy with life to this point.
