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This is something that’s been on my mind since the end of 2024, and I’m still not sure how to put it to words tactfully, nor is it something I even fully understand. So this is going to be fairly messy, and we’ll see how far I get.
Sometime during my sabbatical, and before grad school was even an option in my mind, I would get this feeling of “I’ve made it” bubbling up within me from time to time. Now, if you asked me to describe how this feels, what would I say, hmmm?
It’s like some mix of:
This feeling has only gotten stronger and more frequent since starting school, amplified by me feeling like there’s no place I’d rather be, as well as seeing my younger self in classmates of mine who I can feel are really striving to make their (first) career work. I’ve also been practicing cultivating this feeling of “I’ve made it” within me, because it’s brought me a sense of ease that I like and want more of.
But I also want to better understand what happened to cause this shift, because it feels a bit elusive. And also I’d like more people to feel like this if possible.
One component is career. In videogame parlance, I felt like I’d “beaten the game” in my first career. I’d reached the “endgame content”, and I was OK to stop grinding. And through beating the game, I feel like I’ve ejected from the Matrix. I can see now that having a good career isn’t going to solve all my problems, or be the sole thing I need to be content. Plus, I understand roughly how things play out, I get the trappings, what needs one’s career fulfills, what people get stuck chasing, etc. Confucius said, “We have two lives, and the second one starts when we realize we have only one,” and coming to terms with your career feels like part of this process. Having an illustrious career alone will not satisfy you.
So then what will?
Being in a solid position financially also played a big part for me, though I don’t think this is sufficient either. I was, and am, nowhere near the point where I could just never work again and live off my savings. But my finances are solid, I have a safety net in my parents, and I know how to invest. And somewhere along the way I went from feeling that money was scarce, to feeling like I had enough and things would work out just fine with my trajectory. Except I don’t think much changed about my trajectory from 2024 to 2025 to 2026. Maybe it’s because I had a good year in the markets in 2025, and that boosted my confidence. But just having more money doesn’t feel like the only part of the equation. Something about my relationship to money changed.
Some of it is probably psychological and emotional. At the start of my sabbatical in 2023, I was still very stressed about pinning down my next source of reliable income. Some of it was pragmatic. But some of it was me tying my ability to make money to my self-worth. Since then, I’ve untangled this last part a bunch (maybe 50%? if it’s even possible to quantify these things), and I think that’s a factor.
Another factor is what I’ll call “attunement to self” and one’s “hit rate” on decisions. I think about this stuff a lot, which maybe gives me an EXP boost of sorts. Figure out what you like (and what you don’t like). Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of (thereby focusing less on what you don’t want to see more of). Know thyself. And through being more attuned to yourself, you’ll be able to make decisions that are more and more aligned with your values and what you want. Your hit rate on (1) how many of your decisions feel good, and (2) how deeply those decisions feel good will increase. I encountered this framing in my mid-20s, and one of the cool byproducts was that I started paying attention to my attunement and hit rate, and could actually feel it improving over the years (I’m 32 now).
Not to say that I’m totally zen now or I don’t have any struggles. I definitely do! I’m still constantly trying to improve a boatload of things in my life, in a grasping way. But now there’s a growing part of me that believes that I’ve made it. And to not sweat the small stuff, and it’s almost all small stuff. (Also, spending time with my friends’ 7-month-old feels like it contributed too.)
IDK if this will actually be helpful for anyone else to read, since for me I think I had to get through one whole career, and make a good chunk of progress on financial stability, all while being somewhat obsessively introspecting and refining my tastes over time… Maybe I’m OK not sweating the small stuff BECAUSE I’ve ticked off a lot of the big stuff. Which brings me back to feeling like everything from here on out is bonus.