Lately I've been thinking about short-term and long-term happiness. I'm going through a project at work that's quite stressful and time consuming. But, there's an end in sight, so I'm putting my head down and plowing through my discomfort. It reminds me a little of high school, some semesters of college, and other difficult times in life when I accepted short-term pain for longer-term gain.
But, I don't want this short-term pain to become the norm. There has to be a point at which you step back and the short-term pain ends, either because you realize the longer-term gain you were working for, or because you give up and try a different approach. I worry that I won't be able to tell when that point comes.
Maybe it's that I don't have a clearly defined goal. I shuffle from one waypoint to the next with my head so far down that I can't see where I'm going. Then I start to think about what I really want to do with my life and get really sad because I don't have a goal. My big goals are to have fun doing cool stuff with interesting people. That's not exactly the kind of goal I can take to a career counselor.
If I don't have goals, then I'm just kind of meandering through life. That would be okay if I were enjoying the journey, but I've never been able to do that well. So, either I need goals or I need to relax. I'll just let you guess which is going to be easier for me.