“Happiness is not a privilege, nor it is a right. Happiness is a duty with yourself.”

Unfortunately, I learned from a young age that happiness is fleeting and it takes a lot of work to remain positive throughout life.

There’s times where life hands you a value stock, even though you wanted a growth.

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So why did I choose “pursuing happyness” as my personal blog title?

There's a few reasons listed throughout this post, but the first reason is simply that Pursuit of Happyness is my favorite movie of all time.

I remember when I first got it on DVD, I watched it at least three times the first day.

Before I left my apartment to go take my Series 65, I watched the ending scene where Chris gets the job and celebrates alone amongst a group of people walking down Wall Street.

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My favorite line from the movie, "If you want something, go get it. Period.”

I’ve lived by that quote since the first time I watched the movie in middle school.

There’s a reason I put a period at the end of Piertree Planning’s logo and put a period after my name on Twitter.

It serves as a constant reminder that if you want something, go f***** get it.

No one’s stopping you from reaching your goals or living the life you want to live.

Anything you want to achieve in life is possible if you put in the work and run into a little luck along the way.

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I'm starting this blog as a place to share my thoughts around life and entrepreneurship, but also around personal finance in a way to hopefully change the mindset around money, not more charts and numbers and percentages.  The more comprehensive money and personal finance posts will still be posted on the Piertree blog.

Also, writing is apart of my pursuit of happiness.  

I've written in a journal *just about* every day for the past three years and there's something about writing that I can't replicate in any other activities.

It gives me an escape and a place to untangle my thoughts and through the blog, hopefully help other people along the same journey.

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Another reason is that happiness isn’t something you just stumble upon one day.

Actually, maybe it is.  

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that it’s a constant pursuit and battle to achieve true happiness.

There’s days where it feels like I’ve accomplished this and there’s days where it feels like I’ll never reach that feeling again in my life.

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I wanted to put this part of my story farther into the post because I don’t like bringing attention to it and only want the people who took the time to read the full story to read about it.

But when I was 16, I lost my mom.

I’ve tried to think of words that can describe the feeling but I just can’t.

It was unbelievably devastating.  A feeling that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

It’s something I’ve never really shared in my professional life, but it’s impacted my life more than anything I’ve ever experienced.

You know how when you see a kid with their parents and you can tell which one they took after?

That was me and my mom.

I inherited a lot of her traits but the one that I always wish I adopted was her outgoing personality. If she ran into someone she knew at Walmart, I knew we’d be there for at least an extra 20 minutes.

She taught me so many lessons about life that I still apply to this day, that I didn't fully understand at the time. Education was always a priority for her and she stressed the importance of reading from a very young age. When I was younger and didn’t feel like reading, she would sit with me on the couch in our living room and read to me.

To this day, every time I open a book I think about her.

Reading feels like one way I can connect with her because it brings back such fond and distant memories and I know I’m making her happy by continuing to read and educate myself.

She also supported everything that I wanted to pursue. I always had a goal of being in the MLB and baseball was my life growing up. I don’t know if she ever missed a game I played in.  She also knew how to push me and give me the feedback I needed.  If I sucked, she would tell me the things I needed to work on - not just say “oh it’ll be okay, go get ‘em next time”.

She was everything to me.

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After she died, people would say “it’ll get better” or “it’ll get easier”.

And the truth is, it doesn't.

I believe you learn to live with the pain, but it never goes away.

One of the hardest parts of going through daily life afterwards was that life doesn't stop and life doesn't care what you're going through. You just have to keep going.

I was in high school at the time and while I know nobody did it on purpose, I would still get "your mom" jokes on accident and I’ll just never forget those feelings. It hurt so much and what made it worse was the awkwardness that came up after the person remembered.

They would try to apologize or make me feel better, but what else was I supposed to say other than “oh no, it’s fine”.

It was never fine.  It hurt because I felt like an outsider.

I was missing something that everybody else had.

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I think a lot of people use ‘I’m fine’ when they’re really not and it’s saddening.

I wish more people (including myself) shared their thoughts without feeling like they're weak  or that there’s something wrong with them.  I think the only way to remove the stigma is for people to share their stories and that helps 1) the person sharing because it's a weight off their shoulders and 2) the readers because if your story impacts or helps just one person, it was worth it.

I never really knew what mental health was until just a couple years ago - about the time I graduated college.

I'm kind of glad I didn't discover it earlier because I think I would've started to overthink everything more and fallen deeper into the endless circle of anxiety and depression. At the time, I was under the impression that everyone experienced the same thoughts and the same moods as I was, just from different experiences. And while that may be partially true, I didn't know there was anything wrong with it.  I thought my mind and life would be that way forever.

I didn't fully understand that there was a better path.

While I've educated myself and figured out ways to help shift my mindset, it's still not always smooth sailing.

Maybe you've experienced some of the same feelings.

Anyways, this blog is going to loosely mirror my journey of life & entrepreneurship and I plan to share my losses, my wins, my fears, and everything in between in hopes of impacting at least one person.

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I don't think there's ever going to be a day where I finally say "this is what happiness is".

I believe it's a constant battle with your past and future self.

There's a reason it's called the pursuit of happiness.

After all, what is happiness?