How happy are you?

How happy are you? This question I've been asking myself and friends in various forms and shapes throughout the past 5-6 years... Usually, the answer I get is "I'm okay.. you know, not sooo happy, but its ok." How many of you feel that way? I know I do. The next question I keep asking myself is, why am I only "okay" happy? The life I have now is what I always wanted 4-5 years ago, I already mostly accomplished my goals. I should be happy now, I should feel satisfied. But how come, I still feel something is missing, something could get better.

As I think deeper and deeper about this, I realized my want, or aka greed, is keep on growing as I accomplish more in life. When I graduated college 4-5 years ago from Texas, I was in deep financial debt, and my only wish was to find a stable, good paying job. I didn't like the major I studied, but I choose to follow thru with it since I don't have the time and money to waste. My major put me to a job as a coder. Oh man I don't know how to describe my life in those jobs. Its like fitting a sized 9 feet into a sized 7.5 high heel shoe, rubbing all over the corners, with bruces and some bleeding... (okay, maybe too descriptive there), that was pretty much how I felt. Although I truly disliked my job, I still went with it and tried my very best to do a good job, just to keep the financial security going. For me, I think I'm mostly a lucky person with my career path. I know being a coder/developer is not my passion, I actually thought I will loose all my hair by age 30 if I continued in that role. Therefore, I was looking for other jobs by just mass drop resume everywhere. Luckily, I was picked up by a big tech company from Silicon Valley. So there I went, moved to SF Bay Area, the dream place where I always wanted to live in.

Reality is always taugher than what I imagined. The cost of living and income tax rate in SF Bay Area are ridiculously high. With a ~40% income tax rate, I can only afford to live in a small apartment. I also had to pay for my none working mother plus 4 dogs. Those times were hard.

And of course, I always believe, and proven to be true, that as long as I keep going at it with my full effort, life will get better. Due to the house market going up like crazy in 2011-2013, I made some money with my finance. We were able to put a downpay on a single family home in the suburb area of Bay Area. We moved in, we decorated our house together, we installed all the shutters and blinds by ourselves. Those were sweet times. My dream had all came true that year. I lived in the place I always wanted but was too affaraid to believe that it became reality. I have my own house, a small yard with beautiful garden and flowers. I have my 2 sweetest dogs and 2 cute bunnies living with me. I have a finance that I truely love, and a job .... that we can disucss later ...

This life continued feeling fulfilled for about 1.5 years. Then I start asking questions like:

-Is this the place I want to spend the rest of life living?

-I still haven't seen the world, should I go travel the world now, then come back to re-think if this is still the place I want to forever live in?

-What happens if I get a better guy chasing after me, and I happen to like him too?

-Will I get cancer soon? I'm too afraid to die.

-How can I look forever young?

-How can I buy all the luxury designer fashion I want whenever I want to?

The list can go on and on, but those were the most frequent ones in mind.

The real question I should ask myself, to serve myself the most good is, how should I feel fulfilled? How can I be satisfied with what I have? If I can find myself a justified answer to those questions, I believe I would be much happier?

I believe everyone in this world is missing someting in their life. We all need to find the right answer to the question of how can we feel fulfilled?

Thanks for reading my wordy blog, those are just some of my personal life journey and thoughts I go thru, and find many people around me share the same wonders. Feel free to email me your thoughts: arielzshoppe@gmail.com.