So, where am I on this journey to leave my desk job?

Some of you who live in New York have seen me out and about selling sweets. And I talk all the time about one order or another that Faryn and I are preparing for. Things with the sweets business are going well. We’re slowly growing and building and making plans for what we’ll do next. We both still work fulltime so we haven’t transitioned the business to the next big level yet. But we will. It will happen.

I want to talk today, though, a bit more broadly about where I am on this journey to leave my desk job.  I’ve learned a lot over these last seven months since starting follow my bliss. I plan to write a bit more later on this week about some of the things I’ve learned. But today I’d like to talk about happiness. So far, I’ve learned a lot about happiness – my own happiness, other people’s, how to find it, where to look for it and how to recognize when you’re finally there. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that it doesn’t have quite as much to do with the What in your life has I’d originally counted on.

Will I be “happier” when I finally leave this job and am able to create the kind of days and weeks that I daydream about? Maybe. But I’ll probably also be equally capable of complaining, capable of finding reasons to be annoyed or frustrated, and capable of wishing I had something bigger or better or different. And conversely, I’ll also be equally capable, as I am today, of enjoying the moment, being proud of the reality I’ve created for myself, and being grateful for the riches in my life.

Circumstances tend to have a big impact on people’s happiness, and that’s understandable. If your situation isn’t what you want it to be, it’s natural to feel anything from discouraged to completely devastated. But this journey so far has reinforced for me that all circumstances are (arguably) inherently neutral. How we perceive them is what colors them as good or bad. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

When I was overweight, I was extremely unhappy. While it was impossible to know what beget what – Did I become depressed because of my weight or was I heavy because I was depressed? – I do know that my mindset was so deeply rooted in a place of pain and defeat that I could barely conceive of a world where anything could be different. To a person even heavier than I was, maybe being my size looked pretty good. To me, though – and not just because of my weight – my world was hopeless.

I started seeing a therapist before I started losing the weight. She had an incredible task ahead of her, but together we slowly began chipping away at this mindset I held onto that said my life was miserable. She helped me feel pride in some of my accomplishments and she helped take away the shame I had about the mess I’d made of things. I really believe it wasn’t until that mindset began to crack and weaken that I was able to focus on getting physically healthy.

Flash forward to 115 pounds thinner, I wasn’t cured of the depressive tendencies. I would still sometimes experience a crippling sadness, loneliness, a desire to shut the world out and hide away. Before I lost the weight, I thought for sure my life would be wonderful if I was just thin enough to get attention from that boy or fit into that skirt. But again, my circumstances weren’t in charge, my mindset was and that negative, isolating mindset knew how to work its way into a night out at a bar or an afternoon in a fitting room and darkly color my whole perception of my experience.

It wasn’t until I decided to feel good about myself that I felt good about myself. I couldn’t really be happy as a thin person until I took the focus off the 10 pounds I still wanted to lose or the relationship I couldn’t fix or the years I thought I’d lost, and put the focus on how incredible it was that I was able to change my situation through my own hard work and that I was finally walking around facing my life courageously. And wouldn’t you know, when I finally changed my mindset to match my new body, I felt more confident, secure and at ease than I ever had in my life. I even started to believe that I not only had a chance with the kind of great guys I’d never have imagined dating, but that I deserved “him,” whoever he would be, and I wouldn’t settle for anything less. And soon after, I fell in love with one of the best ones around.

So I’ve already had plenty of real life experience with the power of mindset. And it turns out this journey is no different.

Starting a sweets business has been eye opening in a lot of ways. Like I have done a million times before in my life, I chose to invest in it and commit to it well before I knew enough about what I was getting into. Luckily, as challenging as it can be sometimes, I still want to do it. There’s something so lovely and fulfilling about starting your own business – I never had any idea that that was the case. I suppose it’s similar, in a small way, to what I’ve heard about becoming a parent: you become a member of a club you didn’t even know existed until now.

I’m enjoying the hell out of baking, brainstorming, keeping “the books,” strategizing, learning and I’m even enjoying the less glamorous parts like finding the right way to fix a mistake or staying up all night to finish an order. It’s not always fun, but it’s always rewarding. Still, I’ve known for a while now that even when I’m no longer a desk job employee, even when Fanny & Jane has a physical storefront location, even when we’ve been in business for a while and things are going well and I’m able to walk down the street feeling like I am in charge of my own way of life, it will still be really hard work. I will still have a schedule to maintain and a work/life balance to strike. I will still work long hours and answer to other people. I will still have to be frugal and avoid eating out too much. I will still have to be crafty to fit in some exercise every day and I will still crash into bed every night wondering when I will win a six month vacation to a deserted island.

I never thought all that stuff would go away once I left this desk job and moved onto my next life. I’ve always known I’d have to work hard for whatever I ended up deciding to pursue. And shirking hard work wasn’t at all my intention when I set out on this journey. But it seems that I may have actually signed myself up, by heading in the direction of opening a bakery (what?!), for an even crazier life than the one I lead now. And what can I say to that, but Bring it on.

When I no longer work at the desk job and I finally work for myself, I will be grateful, relieved, proud and excited. I will also be tired, confused, sometimes regretful and scared. That’s life. So, I repeat: my circumstances do not determine my happiness. I am practicing every day being happy exactly where I am. I can still want something else and plan for something else, while choosing to be happy where I am now. Today. Otherwise, the only skill I will have mastered when I move on from this lifestyle will be the ability to be disappointed by what I don’t yet have, and disenchanted by what I do.