Finding happiness: I have it, but am I using it?

The money is insanely good. If I took no days off and worked at least 40 hours every week and didn't have to buy my own health insurance, it'd be double what I made last year.

So why am I so damn unhappy being here? Well, for starters, I have nothing to do yet. There lies the problem. Conventional logic would dictate that getting paid hundreds of dollars a day to do nothing is a pretty sweet deal.

Yesterday, while reading FastCompany, a columnist that coaches executives made a pretty interesting point regarding careers and being satisfied by life. He said, in the wake of new year's resolutions that undoubtedly are meaningless by now, "Don't look ahead. Look behind. Know that you need to be happy now, to follow your dreams."

Well, fresh off the two month break I had, I started to really understand what makes me happy. It's not that I dislike work or am lazy. Quite the contrary... I'll dig in and work like crazy when it's something I believe in or love (to the extent it interferes with my "marital relations" when I'm up writing code until 3 a.m.). A portion of my well-being is tied to being emotionally invested in what I do. If that tie isn't there, I essentially am not interested.

And that makes sense, because quite frankly the other things that are so important to me have the same tie. The relationship with my wife (who I can't stand to be without after spending two months with her), with coaching volleyball, with running a successful Web site... these are all things that I'm emotionally tied to.

This begs the question of why you should waste time in life doing things that you don't have your heart in? Steph is going through the same thing as she's struggling to stay interested in finishing her PhD.

The sticking point has to do with making a living. I like the living we have, because it's above average in terms of the amount of travel we can do, the stuff we can buy, the places we can go and have dinner. All of that requires cash, and a job like mine provides plenty of that and then some (essentially setting up a very strong retirement).

You can see the circular reference here. You need money to do some of the things that help feed your soul, but to make that money you might have to do stuff that sucks the soul from your very being. Isn't that a pickle? What makes that even more irritating is that we've recently learned some important lessons regarding the importance of money through the tough times of other people close to us.

The realization is that I simply need to deal with the job for now to at least stabilize our financial well-being. Once I've been able to do that, I can start to pursue some other things. I know that somewhere in my racing mind there's an idea that can allow me to work for myself, and therefore balance my life with the other things that are important to me. I just need to figure out what the hell it is.