For the last couple of years I’ve struggled a lot with my job. I had a lot of focus problems that I’ve worked to fix, on-call responsibilities are always stressful, and in general just have had a good amount of hours coming up to speed.

I think the challenge I’m facing now is now that I’ve survived, and now I can survive a challenging role like this - how do I have thrive? How do I not only handle this challenge, but use it as some sort of engine.

An interesting thought experiment - what would I do if I kept my day job but my happiness was my main priority?

Well first thing would be to make my job tolerable, since that’s where the majority of stress comes from. That means making good friends with your coworkers, understanding the things you work on, and feeling generally competent. This is very important.

However once I’m past that, that’s where things get tricky. An obvious one would be to make sure I wasn’t working too many hours. Make sure I’m exercising, make sure I’m spending time with friends. Allowing myself to develop passions and hobbies, and to treat them as a practice that you do everyday. Having wonderful relationships, and spending time on them.

There’s a lot to think about here and not enough time. I’ll come back to this.