Picture this. You are out one evening, having a beverage or two at your favorite local establishment (I’m currently having a Buffalo Brewing Company 1836 Copper Ale, enjoying the wonderful 60ish degree “Winter” temperatures in Houston, Texas). You’re with a few friends, having a good time and someone new enters the circle. Maybe it’s a friend of a friend, someone’s work acquaintance, or perhaps even a complete stranger. Regardless, think to yourself — what are the first few questions you ask them?

After giving this a lot of thought (and having a few beers myself), I’ve come up with the below list:

1. The first (and obvious) is the aforementioned “How do you know so and so?”

2. Then, comes some variation of the “Where are you from” (often hometown or high school for Texas — Friday Night Lights forever), “where do you live” (I know you said New York City, but for real, what neighborhood — are you a West Village Yuppie or a Brooklyn Hipster?), or what Undergrad / Grad / Law school did you go to? Yes, you are being judged as soon as you answer.

3. More often than not, the third is “So what do you do for a living?” Let the judging continue.

The infamous “What do you do for a living” question lends itself to a little more creative liberty, or does it? Yes, you can embellish your job as a “Marketing Assistant” (and no offense to those who are) and describe with passion that your role is tasked with innovating the world of Marketing and that means you are on the cutting edge of marketing strategy and digital media, but more often than not, when the glamour is stripped away and reality kicks in — most of us work pretty pedestrian, 9 to 5 (or worse) jobs and the last thing we want to do is talk about work when we’re out having a few beverages.

When I think about my own journey, I have been extremely proud and excited about the different career paths I’ve been fortunate to have ventured down. For three years prior to business school, I worked for an extremely successful start-up consulting firm that helped Fortune 100 companies around the world to develop innovation strategy and processes. We worked with the people that were coming up with the new gadgets, widgets and products that we all get excited about. I traveled every week, was a 100K mile flyer, met a ton of interesting people and earned some incredible real life and professional experiences.

Then, for two years I attended the University of Virginia Darden School of Business to earn my MBA. There was a lot of hard work involved but when you do it with the people I did it with (both in terms of caliber, character and personality), it’s pretty darn fun. Those two years gave me some pretty amazing friends and memories.

Next, I achieved what I thought was my calling — I started a career as a Wall Street Investment Banker at one of the top banks on the Street. For me, I thought it was like a moment from the movie Goodfellas — I was a made man. I was going to live the rest of my life stylin’ and profilin’, riding in limousines and private jets like Gordon Gekko. I was excited to work for some of the largest companies in the world, on some of the most complicated mergers and acquisitions and with some of the smartest people in the world. It was truly a dream come true.

I had worked so hard for this moment only to find out quickly that the dream I once envisioned turned out to be the nightmare I never imagined.

I worked hard — harder than I ever thought physically possible. And I’m not talking about the, “Man, it’s 7pm, I really had to stay late tonight” hard. I’m talking about the not seeing your significant other awake for multiple days at a time, getting so little sleep that you effectively train your body to live on four hours of sleep (or less), waking up before the sun and 16–18 hours later greeted by the same absence of day light when I was fortunate enough to go home for a “nap” before doing it all over again the next day. I lost track of my healthy habits and gained weight. I was moody. I was often angry. I fought with my loved ones and never saw my friends. One of my best friends visited me during my darkest moments in NYC and said, “Dude, you don’t look good.”

You would think — maybe the work was so fulfilling this was something I could bare. The worst part of all and more importantly, the work wasn’t that thrilling at all, in fact, it was the total opposite: endless iterations of 50+ page documents that hardly ever got read, creating various scenarios that weren’t plausible just to show how a certain tax savings scheme would drive an extra penny of Earnings Per Share (EPS), delivering books to my superiors houses at all hours of the night, and (my favorite) pulling all-nighters to finish a document only to find out at 8am that the meeting had been cancelled and would not be rescheduled. Couple this with working for people who have little concern for your personal well-being and largely treat you like part of the machine, not a real person. Certainly sounds like a dream doesn’t it. Believe me, no one has dreams about EPS accretion and dilution.

Thus, came the choice. Here I was living the “dream” yet feeling completely unfulfilled. Would I stay and continue down a glamourous path of misery? More importantly, how was I going to define myself? Was I going to let the Wall Street world I joined define who I was as an individual? Was I going to give into the pressures associated with the money, the power, the brand, the mystique or the City itself? Was I going to truly live out my dream at the cost of losing myself and those around me?

I thought about these questions constantly. I consulted some of my most trusted friends, mentors and advisors. I knew what I had to do, but making the decision to walk away from what I thought was a dream come true did not come easily. What I did know for a fact was that the glamour, the money and the power were not worth me losing the things I promised myself I’d never compromise: myself, my values, my loved ones, my life.

So, I made a change. I quit my job. I took a job at another less-notorious firm doing a similar function but in a way less sexy environment. I moved to Houston — a large city, but definitely not the allure of Broadway. I work hard, but not nearly as hard as I was. I’m much happier and way less stressed than before. However, for the first time in several years, I’m not excited about my job and the story that it gives me. I’m just working a job like everyone else and am really struggling to figure out what I want to do with myself. Struggling to identify what my true calling is.

One of my best friends calls this part of our stories “the journey.” To quote him, it’s easy to “look back and see lots of well-intentioned decisions but feel today like they’ve not brought you the fulfillment that you thought they would. I hate it when we follow the rules expecting that if we do A then we get B and then we’re left confused when things didn’t add up the way we thought they would.”

As a wise and knowing friend, he left me with a challenge. “Fulfillment can come from work — I very much believe this, but it has to be rooted in something deeper. And you don’t have to be a poor non-profit employee to do that — you can be fulfilled anywhere. Discover the echoes inside of you that you hear when you do the thing that makes time fly by. Stop making this about you and see where you can help others through the work you’re already doing. Who knows, you may find fulfillment in a place you thought was dead to you.”

So, that’s who I am and what I do. My name is Matthew Priest. I’m a proud graduate of The Texas State University and the University of Virginia. I was born and raised in Lumberton, TX, in the heart of East Texas. And, I work in finance. These are elements of my story I can’t change right now.

But, my journey is far deeper and contains much more. It’s a story that has 28 chapters, with the 29th complete in two weeks, the 30th to come and, Lord willing, several more glorious years after that. It’s a journey that has seen the highest mountains and the lowest valleys; the smile of elation and the cry of sadness; the triumph of success and the darkness of defeat. More importantly, it’s a journey that has made me who I am today and surrounded me with friends and family that are as much a part of my journey as I am.

I will never walk through a portal and come out the other side fully prepared to face all of the things that life will put in my path. The way I prepare for those things is continuing on this journey. Thanks for being a part of it. I promise that my 30th year will be a year in which I work hard and live well. I hope you do the same.