Happé - Deeply Grateful & Entirely Unsatisfied

For Chris & Elsie Happ Copyright 2018 by Amanda Happ. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-4521-6170-9 (epub, mobi) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available. ISBN: 978-1-4521-6151-8 (hc) Chronicle books and gifts are available at special quantity discounts to corporations, professional associations, literacy programs, and other organizations. For details and discount information, please contact our premiums department at or at 1-800-759-0190.

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It has been a hard and wonderful few years, as it likely has been for you too. I dont have much business writing you a book, so lets set expectations at an appropriate level. Unless, of course, you prefer one-sided conversations with someone as jumbled up as anybody elsethen, settle in. By day Im a problem solverall sorts of problems for all types of organizations that find themselves faced with some of the biggies: What have we become? Who should we be? How can we matter more? I set about figuring that out. Ive got methods and tools. Ive gotten pretty good at bringing people to their answers, painting a picture of how things could and should be, and giving them the confidence that this picture is true and attainable.

Hey, I can even help draw you a map of how to get there! All the while that Ive been getting better at that, on an inverse trajectory, my own biggies have become unresolvable. My mountain of questions now generously overshadows my small lump of beliefs. Unknowns abound. When I try to figure out where Im headed, a mental picture forms of tumbleweed being blown off into the distancealmost a zen-like state if zen-like states were all about ambiguous stress. Things felt the opposite when I was leaving art school. I was a ball of certainty.

Only the first couple of steps in my plan were sketched out, but I figured that was all I needed. One was get a day job in the arts, and the other was keep painting at all other times and something will happen. It seemed pretty clear, despite the odds of making it in art, and Id always been defiant. Defiance can go either way, of course, either making you resilient or making you an asshat. I was splitting the difference. But, as mentioned, its been hard and wonderful since then.

Ive followed a career that wasnt what I predicted. Ive lost my parents. Ive loved and hurt some very good people. Ive surrendered myself to the most trustworthy of friends. Ive figured out that I have no idea what Im doing, and I dont know what the right track is, let alone if Im on it. I have found myself softened.

This terrifies my insolent core. So Im down to a few core tenets, that humble lump of beliefs, but in there is something that I think might be of value to the both of us. The world will offer you grace and redemption. Youre going to need to lower your defenses in order to accept the offer. And then the world will ask too much of you. The fates will ignore your boundaries.

Youre going to need a deep reserve of insubordination. Theres the rub. Somehow weve got to figure out how to be both unyielding and openhearted, at once blazing and uncertain, wholly unsatisfied and deeply grateful. A bunch of defiant softies. Due to said mountain of questions, I cannot offer you a guidebook or a manifesto (please!) to lead the way. This time I cant draw the map.

But if this sounds like a worthy destination, this book contains a set of observations, objections, bad jokes, and possible truths that might cast light on some stretches of the path.

One of the most annoying things about undergoing a fundamental evolution of the self is that youve got to come up with a whole new set of priorities. In marketing, they call these Key Performance Indicators, and you figure them out first so that you can measure if youre being successful or not. In real life, I recommend fleeing the scene if you hear the term KPI. But, though Im loathe to admit it, there is something to be learned here.

My big issue is that since Ive arrived at a point of largely not knowing anything, Im having a hard time figuring out whats whatwhats worth giving up, whats worth hanging on to. Maybe my sarcasm is pass. Or maybe I need it, for all the jerks. But my instincts tell me that Im definitely carting around some outdated priorities, and I need to shed the deadweight. So now Im trying to discern the difference between letting go of hang-ups and losing my edge.

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