{"id":32511,"date":"2020-09-11T23:01:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-12T04:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32511"},"modified":"2020-09-11T23:07:25","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T04:07:25","slug":"happiness-and-success-elude-me-unless-im-doing-something-i-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32511","title":{"rendered":"Happiness and success elude me unless I\u2019m doing something I love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really want to sell you a house. I wish I did.<\/p>\n

You know how you sometimes admit something to yourself that you\u2019ve been trying to hide? I had one of those moments this week \u2014 when I couldn\u2019t even try to lie to myself.<\/p>\n

I was waiting inside this nice $425,000 house for a potential buyer to arrive. I had arrived 15 minutes early and had the house to myself. I decided to record an impromptu video that I could use as a promotion. I started recording about half a dozen times but stopped in disgust each time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to sell houses,\u201d<\/em> I suddenly said out loud. And I was glad no one was there to hear me.<\/p>\n

For the last five or six years, I\u2019ve felt as though my life was on hold. I felt like someone treading water. I\u2019ve worked in real estate \u2014 because it was a convenient opportunity \u2014 but I\u2019ve hated work every day. And it makes me long for the days when I was excited about work instead.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I had decided to leave my job and take a chance on things I care about more, but this entire coronavirus mess made that a non-starter. It just didn’t seem feasible with as much financial uncertainty as we were facing.<\/p>\n

I spend half of my time running the office operations for a real estate company. I’m free to sell in the other half of my time. I’ve actually become really good at what I do, which is almost annoying since I dislike it so much.<\/p>\n

If a friend wants to buy a house, I can actually enjoy that process, because it’s someone I’m excited about helping. I love helping people I like. But if it’s another random stranger — who\u2019s probably delusional from watching idiotic and unrealistic real estate shows on television — it’s hard to make myself care. It’s hard to even make a call, even if it’s someone I know wants to buy or sell.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about this again Friday night because I found myself getting excited about a project that I would care about. It’s actually a real estate project, but it’s not something simple and pragmatic like matching up buyers with available houses. It\u2019s a development project that I’ve dreamed about many times.<\/p>\n

It’s a project that I would care about. It’s something I would be excited about. It’s something that should be far more profitable than what I’m doing now. But it would require a partner who could sell investors and raise the money. I have good ideas and I’m a good project-builder, but I’m terrible at selling people on things that seem obvious to me.<\/p>\n

There’s an ornery part of me that wants to shout, “If you can’t see why this is a great idea, I’m wasting my time with you!”<\/em> And that isn’t very diplomatic, much less successful<\/p>\n

This isn’t anything new. I’ve encountered this obstacle time and time again in my life. It’s something I’ve never really figured out. I feel like somebody who\u2019s invented an amazing space ship that can take people to another planet successfully and gracefully — but I forgot to figure out how to build the booster rocket to get it off the ground.<\/p>\n

The world is a playground of exciting and possibly profitable projects to pursue, but I’m doing something that I hate every day instead. I’m not sure how I allowed this to happen. It wasn’t that long ago when I was making well over six figures and enjoying what I was doing. It’s humiliating and it’s humbling to have lost that and somehow fallen to this point in life.<\/p>\n

I have to find a way to get back to doing something I’m passionate about and that offers big rewards for success. In some ways, I feel like Job from ancient Hebrew scriptures. I had everything take away from me — for reasons I don’t understand — and I’m waiting for the nightmare to finally end. If God and Satan had a bet about me, I’m ready for it to be over.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’ll sell you a house. I’ll keep working to make the company I administer more profitable and competitive. I’ll do what I have to do. If I like you, I’ll enjoy helping you. If I don’t know you, I’ll help you and try to pretend I care. If I can make myself call you.<\/p>\n

But I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I’m not very good at pretending to be someone I’m not. And I’ve gotten to the point that I can’t even look into a video camera and pretend to care about finding new clients.<\/p>\n

I’ve somehow dug a hole for myself — and I haven’t been able to find a way to climb out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t really want to sell you a house. I wish I did. You know how you sometimes admit something to yourself that you\u2019ve been trying to hide? I had one of those moments this week \u2014 when I couldn\u2019t even try to lie to myself. I was waiting inside this nice $425,000 house for Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-8sn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32511"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32525,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32511\/revisions\/32525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}