It’s easy to buy into the idea that you can’t be happy until you’ve achieved your goal. Your dream, your personal calling, whatever you want to call it. 

The reality is, that we don’t control how things turn out after we do something. We only control our effort. Most dreams stay dreams, and we often talk ourselves out of our dreams. We lack the confidence, we think it’s unrealistic, or we make mistakes. We’re human.

That’s why I really like Eddie Huang’s commentary in his Authors @ Apple interview: 

I meet a lot of people [that say], “I got to open a restaurant, I always wanted to be a chef.” I’m like, “You got to chill, because an occupation should not define your life or who you are. I’ve gained a lot of things. I’ve lost a lot of things. I’ll tell you what, your self confidence and your acceptance of yourself—it doesn’t actually correlate to those things. I think it’s very important for people to have self worth, regardless of things they can hold on to, poles they can grasp.

You can choose to be happy today. To be happy now. To do your work. To do a good job with whatever your job is, even if it’s not your dream job, with the understanding it can potentially get you to where you want to go. You can still make time to pursue your dreams, even if in a smaller way than you’d wished for. Even if it’s 15 minutes at a time.