About Me
I first became interested in Buddhism my freshman year at Bowdoin College in a class taught by Kidder Smith. The class focused on Buddhism and other far-eastern religions. I’ve been agnostic my entire life (and still am), and I don’t really buy into reincarnation as Buddhism teaches, nor am I entrigued by Buddha figures or chanting and other spiritual rituals. What was really eye-opening to me in taking Smith’s class, however, was the focus that Buddhism places on being happy. I couldn’t believe that there was an entire discipline on the philosophy of just plain-old being happy. This made me question for the first time in my life, whether or not I was happy, and allow me to decide what I could do to make myself happier.This made me drastically change my behavior while in college. I became far more laid back, perhaps to the point of apathy. I did most things only if I felt like doing them at the moment. I ended up getting lazier about school work and missed more and more classes. I think that this might have been an over-compensated reaction to the stressful high school life I lead, constantly being told what I was doing right and wrong from teachers and parents. I didn’t have to think that much about what I wanted up until college. Then I had more choices, but wasn’t goal oriented, so I lost a lot of the direction that my parents had previously molded for me.
I graduated from college in 2001, so have been out for about 5 years. It’s taken me some time to get focused on a career, but I think that I’m heading in the right direction now. My effort to juggle my career with my pursuit of happiness has been a bit patchy. There were periods of months when I completely lost focus on my state of mind, and was miserable. I’ll say that the past 9 months or so have been pretty good, and I’ve been able to balance both work and happiness in my head.
I have worked in the online advertising industry for several years and currently run my web development and online marketing practice in New York City. The website address is www.odaniinteractive.com.