Wow, yeah. I was just reading a post from June 1999 where I was bemoaning my newfound gainful unemployment. In it, I had this wonderful gem:
I would love to make a career out of my life-long hobby, computer science, and get paid for it. I’d be much happier. There’s a lot to be said for “quality of life.”
Happiness is immensely relative, and you don’t know you’re in it until you look backward across the span of time. I’m not immensely happy these days, even after winning this anticipated career in computer science. But, I will say that compared to those innocent, doe-eyed days of 1999, I’m much better off now in 2020.
As much as I yawp and yarn for them halcyon days of yore, I cannot truthfully say that my trajectory is anything but toward a better life than all my yesterdays. I’m thankful for the opportunities that have been granted, and for those I’ve created. A year after that post, I had finished my first paid web-development gig, and it taught me what I needed to know to land my first tech job in Austin. Everything else has been incrementally upward since then.
I hope we all have our own seasons of increase.