Final Thoughts

Dear Friend,

This is going to be the last time I write you.  You and I have been through a lot this year and now it has to come to an end.  Each time I wrote to you I tried to make it relatable, informative, and sometimes I even tried to make it funny (if I failed on that count, I’m sorry).

This year has taught me a lot about myself and I’m thankful you were around to listen.  Whether you realized it or not, I wrote as a way to work out the frustrations that go along with becoming something that resembles an adult.  Sometimes I probably shared too much information about how I was feeling on that particular day.  I’m sure you were reading more for the career advice and not my whining but if you haven’t already learned, I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve.  You probably shook your head once or twice while reading wondering how a girl could be so dramatic while offering interview tips.  I wish I could tell you.

Each day we are required to get up and put one foot in front of the other and move towards something. The most difficult part is when we don’t quite know what that something is.  Trying to take control of your future is hard because shit happens every day to get in your way.  You and I will probably fail more times than we succeed over the upcoming years and that’s okay.  It should be said that most people who stumble upon my blog do so after Googling “Making mistakes at work” “Mistakes at work” or “I keep making mistakes in my job”.  Yes, we will all make mistakes and the best thing to do is learn from them so we can avoid repeating them.  The difference between those of us who succeed and those who don’t, is how we pick ourselves up and move forward.

Remember that you can always move forward.

I could leave you with some inspirational quotes but I’d rather not be a cliché.  Instead I’m going to wish you good luck and urge you to remember that living for a better tomorrow is a really stupid idea.

Just try to live for a better today and see what happens.

xo

Gabi

What’s Your Perfect Career?

I’m a creature of habit.  I’d like to brag about trying new things all the time and never being a boring old hag but I can’t.  The truth is once I find something I like; I tend to stick with it.  I like to think of this as a good thing because it shows I’m fiercely loyal.  I read the same blogs and from time to time, something new will work its way into my repertoire.  A recent new edition has been ‘Ian Brown Eats Canada’, a special brought to us by the Globe and Mail where the writer treks across Canada in order to experience the many culinary delights our expansive country has to offer.

I cannot even begin to describe my jealousy.  Eating?  Writing?  Traveling?  What more could a person ask for?  Brown has the perfect job.  The kind of job you dream of getting but don’t actually believe it exists.  Did you ever sit around with your friends discussing what the perfect career would be?  You know those conversations where you end up talking about how awesome it would be to be hired on as a paid “Executive Ice Cream Tester” or “Chief Video Game Officer”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job,  but if someone offered me the chance to eat my way through Canada, I’d be on the road with the top down on my convertible (yes I drive a convertible with a white cloth roof, which I can assure you is the worst idea ever).

So I’m following Brown because I think his journey is pretty bad ass and his writing makes me happy.  This morning I sat down at my desk and was excited to see that Brown had eaten something else and written about it.  He described the daydreaming he did in between Winnipeg and Saskatoon and the fresh Caprese salad he had on the way.  Later on he ate half of a terrible hamburger, a delicious fruit filled pie, and finished off with a slew of martinis once he reached Saskatoon.  You go Brown.

I was thinking about how happy Brown must be until I got to the end of his article.  It seems that a sudden longing for his family hit him as he took the elevator to his room.  His wife, daughter, and friends are all thousands of kilometers away.  So far away that no amount of delicious fat-filled pie can make up for their absence.  I was hit with the hard lesson that my young and naïve self hasn’t quite grasped…. Success isn’t success if you don’t have anyone to share it with.  No job or amount of money will ever fill the void of love, companionship, and friendship.  We can talk about the perfect career until we’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day we should remember what really matters.

Brown puts it perfectly, “It’s so hard to be alone, to see the point and keep going when there’s no one to keep going with.”

So hold on to those in your life that will make success that much sweeter!

So little time.

I have exactly five minutes to create a post.  I was writing about the joys of doing work which makes you feel like you have accomplished something at the end of the day, but it was boring.

I now have four minutes.

Work has been pretty busy over the past few weeks.  Lots of teleconferences and meetings with clients.  Things should die down for the next few weeks so I can work on a couple of side projects.

Three minutes.

I have kept my whiteboard calendar which has enough room for four months empty because it reminds me how fast time goes.

Instead the days remain empty and dateless.

Two minutes.

I have two big projects I need to start working on, which is why I am counting down these five minutes.  I really need to get back to work.

One minute.

Insert witty ending here.

Are Success and Happiness Related?

I’ve been working for over two months now.  Working at a job I didn’t think I would get for at least another year (if I was lucky).  I get to do fun, exciting, and challenging things.  I write strategies, video run sheets, taglines, branding protocols, and all sorts of other things I didn’t even know existed a few short months ago.  I constantly think about how fortunate I am to be given this opportunity.  I tell people about my luck.  Then I correct myself and say it was part luck, part ambition.  Sometimes though, there are problems that luck, ambition, and a good job can’t fix.  You’re probably going to hate me for saying this, but getting a great job doesn’t mean that everything in your life will fall into place.  I know we all have a vision of what things will look like once we ‘grow up’ and this often involves getting a job, working towards tangible goals, being successful, and doing all the things we always dreamed of.  Life is laughing at us when we believe this is how things will be.

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago to get some things checked out and he asked me a funny question.  We went through the routine questions “Are you getting enough sleep?” “Are you pregnant?” “Do you exercise regularly?” and then he looked me straight in the eye and asked “Are you happy?”  I faltered.  For some reason, this question rattled me; surely my reasons behind visiting the doctor couldn’t be related to my level of happiness.  I realized, this isn’t something we ask ourselves nearly enough.  It should be a simple thing to answer.  It should be answerable by a yes or a no.  However, like many other things in life, happiness isn’t black and white.  I have many of the pieces which can construct happiness but it doesn’t necessarily mean I would define myself as happy.  I cling to these pieces because I am learning how fragile and fleeting they are.  If you don’t care and nurture them, one day you will wake up to find a piece of your collection missing.  If you take a piece for granted (ie. A steady income or comforting friend) you will lose it because you stop working for it.  Sometimes, a piece is taken from you and you don’t have any control over the gaping hole which is left.  It can feel at times like you are juggling the different facets of your happiness (ie. Advancing your career while maintaining important friendships) that you can’t even enjoy them because there is too much pressure not to drop them.

It probably sounds like I am whining and maybe I am just a bit.  I’m just trying to figure things out, and writing about it seems to be the only way I know how to lately.

And to answer the question in the title of this post…. “Are success and happiness related?” as of right now, I’m going to say kind of, but one definitely does not equal the other; the equation is much more complicated than that.

Sound Advice

I don’t have time to do a real post today even though I’ve got lots of work related tidbits to write about.  I will share this piece of wisdom from the cleverest cartoon out there- Charlie Brown. I am a firm believer that all we ever need to know can be learned from cartoon characters.

“I’ve developed a new philosophy… I only dread one day at a time.”

Here are some other quotes from Charles M.  Schulz for you to read, my personal favourites “Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker” and “There is no greater burden than great potential” and “Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.”

So folks, when the road ahead looks rather long and bumpy, do like Charlie, and take it one day at a time while avoiding giant piles of leaves when eating candy on a stick.

Good night friends.