What's it all about?

I consider myself, rightly or wrongly, to be somewhat intelligent. I have a well paying job with a company that is the number 1 choice of college graduates as the place they would most like to work. My income is in the top 10%--which is a surprise since I never made much money. I haven't done too badly considering the limited tools I started out with. Yes, I graduated from high school and college and then went through a series of low jobs until I got on the right track. Somehow I put myself through college by working at a cafeteria for years, stealing my meals and just barily making it but never thinking I wouldn't make it. If there is one quality that has gotten me through it is this blind optimism, this feeling that things will work out well. I could have easily given up considering how low I started but somehow I had the ability to not accept defeat and maintain this idea that I could do anything if I tried (Is that a distinctly American quality? This idea that anything is possible if one works hard enough. It's of course a false one but it sure helps keep this consumer society functioning.) For example, I had to go through over 50 interviews before I was offered a contract position with my current employer. When that ended, I went through another 30 or so interviews to get the second position. When that ended, I got the next positition in one interview. And now, after being hired and enduring five more interviews and another five when I changed positions, I have been told I have six weeks to find another position or I am out. So this past week I started the interview process again. I managed to get an informational interview on Thursday and now I am waiting to hear if there will be another interview (yes, there was a second informational interview and now I am witing for the real interviews to start). Why am I saying all of this? I think success is based upon working and failing and then continuing to work and expect more failures. Look at any successful person and their life will not be one smooth trajectory to fortune and, however you define it, success. And I am not talking about financial success, which I have not really achieved. I am talking about success that only you can define for yourself. Honorable work. Actions that can pass the red-face test and a general feeling that you are contributing and doing your best. Maybe that is the real measure of success: that you are doing your best. Trite, I know, but in my present mood I think doing your best is extremely hard. I think one of the reasons that I am losing my position is that I faltered and did not continue to do my best and as a result I am being let go. I lost sight of the hard work I had put in at the beginning and thought I could coast along and not have to continue putting out the effort. That is the difficult part of success. It's not enough to make it, there is the staying there that is the work. Success is not some gift you get to keep you have to earn it every day. I have failed to work for it each day. I got lazy and apathetic. I lost sight of how far I have come. I worked at Pizza Hut when I first got to Seattle. I cleaned carpets for nearly six months so I could pay my rent. And then, I started working as a temp doing whatever came along so I could maintain some level of dignity. I was pretty low for a long time. I lived in a horrible studio apartment with a bunch of crazy people. Screams in the night. Cockroaches. It was low. I lived that way for years until I came into the light and tried to do something different. I quit my job and actually got into a career. I started using my brain instead of just sitting and doing nothing. Sure, I still had horribly bad habits--procrastinating and drinking heavily but somehow I was moving forward. The point is that a person can't give in to their low desires. That's what I have done. I went backwards and through some miracle I have been given six weeks to pull things together. I will keep you posted.