Ever hit a professional goal but felt surprised by your reaction?

Yes, I have hundreds of patent filings (in atom space, not bits), every invention has about a week shelf life where I’m pleased, then the following week I think it was obvious in hindsight and I look for the next hit.

The feelings of meaning pale in comparison to interacting with my young kids throwing carrots at the kitchen table or watching them be amazed with a frog they find.

Life is interesting!

I thought financial security would be more comforting. I didn't realize how much of it is performance... in a truly not meaningful way. Or how deep the fear of "going backwards" goes.

I bounce between these patterns:

    * I've nearly starved before, I don't need this
    * I really like not worrying about food, maybe I'll grin and dance

Special case though, hardly any goals. Just getting by. Lost my 20s trying to get here

I don't think I've ever set a professional goal. The promotions and stuff are all controlled by other people and almost arbitrarily given out.

Let's say it was an "intermediate goal". Just before my first child was born, I quit my consulting job. While looking for another job, I went into business as a solo consultant to have some cash coming in. Surprisingly, I brought in enough money in the first 6 months that I could extrapolate that into a viable business & livelihood (I've started several small ventures before and this one felt different). What was unexpected was how stressed I was from telling multiple prospective customers that I could take on their projects. When you're trying to get business, you know that you're not going to "close" every deal in the pipeline - but the idea of potentially overloading myself with several large projects and letting down the customer, was very emotionally taxing.

Of course, when I eventually got a great job and had to back out of an engagement it was a non-issue for the client. It happens all the time with contractors/consultants... I learned a valuable lesson about what it takes to run a business, and the kinds of businesses I'm suitable for.

I didn't think I'd really like management, but I also didn't think I'd totally hate it. I liked helping to organize the team and put systems in place to make things run more smoothly. People also tended to look to me for direction. It was my team that pushed me to make the move to be their manager. I was absolutely miserable and it was all self-imposed. After a year I asked if we could re-org some things so I could go back to being an individual contributor. The team was pretty disappointed I was stepping down, which I guess means I did a good job, but mentally I just couldn't deal with trying to balance my own perfectionism with other people doing the work.

I think we humans are not very good at guessing what would make us happy; you just need to try the real thing or as close as possible.

Yes. For the first decade plus I was promoted every couple years, which was what I “wanted” (more like I saw it was what other people wanted and didn’t really have an opinion of my own yet). I enjoyed the continuous challenges and check marks, and the joy of building software — until I wasn’t building software any more. It was a bit of a letdown that only got resolved when I left to join a series of small companies where I was able to sustain building software as a core part of my job while also being a leader (until that too played out, and the process repeated).

Edit: checkmates -> check marks

Many many years ago, I dreamed about moving from engineering into a management position. I was getting baited for a long time that "I had potential, if I do X and Y, maybe next year, yada yada", but it never actually happened - maybe I didn't try hard enough, or it was one of these things someone tells you to give you something to look for, but they never happen - whatever.

Anyway, few years passed, I changed jobs a few times, and one day I realized I actually just wanted to be compensated fairly, without my employer taking a large cut (my hourly rate in the beginning used to be way higher than what customers were billed for my work, so I knew it was attainable). Or, to not have to go above and beyond because my employer came up with "great" ideas that crept up into overtime territory "if I wanted to make it". Getting promoted was just a workaround for the actual goal, but it would increase my responsibilities a lot, and I never considered myself as someone made for management position (despite promising feedback). I'm glad it turned out this way.

So, the surprise was that I hit the goal, but realized it was something else all along (or I'm just coping).

I always saw myself as an introvert, and anyone would say the same about me. I’ve worked remotely for the past 6 years, yet all friends and good memories are all from office times.

I am more social than I’d like to admit, yet I dread all meetings. I guess I’m looking for the water cooler experiences and for me, those just don’t work online.

Yes, very surprised.

I make software projects on the side, and one day I made a decent amount of cash, starting at 0, from a huge surge in users.

Was really cool at first, after getting the cash I was really happy for like a week then I was really miserable.

Not sure why, didn’t like the “popularity” I think, felt very shallow

I used to work in a back office job and I wanted the high life in sales. Got it, then became dissatisfied. Then I wanted to become a software engineer, got there, now I'm miserable again.

The lesson? I'm happy being unhappy.

Always dreamt about working in trading/finance and doing ML stuff and now that I'm doing both it's like "Ehhh, it's fine I guess?".