Plain Jane vs Smart Jo

the tussle continues within. which do i aspire to be? while the former gets a lot of happiness which i term as 'bovine' since it is not she who is the source of her own pleasures but someone else, usually some man (be it father, significant half or the son, depending on her stage in life), the latter strives for her own happiness...
if this is the defining characteristic, then i certainly qualify to be the latter... and not without the usual heartburns, the usual midnight oil burns, or the usual toll... but at the end of it all, there is immense satisfaction...
also, by the standards of the former, i do not have two significant differentiators... neither a father anymore, nor a son... and it is i who prayer fervently for a daughter... any takes on who am i? if not any of the above, certainly different than the rest...

E-G-O, the driver, but why?

this is a question i have been asking myself. while i am into a lot of literature which talks of taming this, and i fully well understand the value of the logic, i am not able to get out of its clutches.
the other day, the CEO of a bank whom i had interviewed last year, recognised me in a conference... gave me a big boost.
some other day, got an appreciating comment from another CEO of another bank, who was the subject of my story some two odd months back, has agreed to write a piece for us and has sent it too... gave me another high.
while appreciation is something positive, why does the feeling of happiness follow it? why am i not able to separate what i do, as part of my work, from i-me-myself? any tips?

gain or loss?

not able to decide whether in all of my 17 years of working, how many have given me creative satisfaction...well, for all my life i wanted to be a writer and finally started doing that close to my fourth decade in life... slow starter, must say.
that's one way of looking at it. the other is of practical wisdom...back home, i always dreaded travel and if one has to write (i mean, a journo) one has to travel... younger, inexperienced and needing more money (to meet all those worldly expectations of others and the self -- you know those -- the house, the gadgets, the car...), i went into stiff bureaucratic organisations... yes, the house got built and furnished, i rode the car, but the inside was far from satisfied... i was feeling claustrophobic throughout... i was carrying out what others had thought... finally when we shifted countries, got the opportunity to write... the material hunger had, by then, died... only the soul was left to be satisfied...
again, those stiff hierarchies showed me another side of life -- how the small ego can become larger than life... so cannot dub those years of unfulfilment as totally a waste, huh?

freedom, are you knocking at my door?

always dubbed as someone who worries a lot, i was never free in my mind, or so i felt till a while back. my better half has bashed his car... what's there to rejoice, you may say? nothing except that the reason which he gave for this was his preoccupation with a thought... a cheque sent has not yet reached where it was supposed to... and no, this is no policy premium, no loan payment... it has been sent for some cause...
while i completely forgot about it and did all that i was supposed to do...write, coordinate, edit, get home to be with R for lunch, rush back and complete my day... to come home and read a book on writing, with some TV thrown in between...
am i improving?