Sometimes someone else says it better

In this case it's Constantine Cavafy. When I left university, I started my career at a big management consultancy firm and worked my ass off. After about two years it slowly started to dawn on me, this can't be it. There must be more to my life than just making the next deadline only for the next deadline and the next looming. And then I came across Cavafy's Ithaka, which so eloquently says what I feel, the trip is as important as the goal, life's about reaching goals but also about how you reach those goals and what you learn on the way.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the journey may be long,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon--don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon--you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your journey may be long.
May there be many a summer morning
when with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind--
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptians cities
to learn, and go on learning, from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.