You Can Be Happy and Still Be Furious

How to practice gratitude without pretending you’re fine.

One year ago today, I got fired.

And I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier.

Candidly, that’s a pretty weird thing to type, so let me be clear here about the rest of it. Life is hard right now. Our health insurance is terrible. Money can be tight. I paid a chunk of our bills this summer by betting on the World Cup. (Go España.)

But my old job was killing me. It wasn’t going anywhere, and I didn’t like who I was becoming. Make no mistake, I made some beautiful friendships there. Over time, though, the good parts got buried under everything else.

Leaving wasn’t exactly a clean break. I helped build that company, for God’s sake. I own almost 20% of it. I sit on the board. And somehow there are lawyers involved now.

It has the feel of a thing that doesn’t end.

For a while, I thought the anger wouldn’t end either. That resentment would become my full-time job. The rest of my life spent taking inventory of what got taken.

Time hasn’t healed these wounds yet. But somewhere in this messy year, I’ve found something that helps me spend less of my day picking at them.

Gratitude.

Stay with me here. Yes, gratitude.

So this week, let’s talk about gratitude, why it matters when you’re still furious, and how you can practice it without pretending you’re fine.

The First Six Months Were Not Awesome

Shock came first. I was fired by the founder and the CEO, guys I had known for decades. When the dust settled, I had no severance, no profit sharing, no unemployment, and for a stretch, no insurance at all.

I thought I had a support system inside that company. But some of my closest people there went quiet. They had jobs to keep. I could understand that and still be hurt by it.

Going through something awful makes certain friendships painfully clear. You notice who checks in. You notice who disappears. And you spend a lot of time staring at your phone, learning the difference.

And yep, I hired a lawyer. Turns out I hired a very bad lawyer.

Twenty thousand dollars later, I felt no closer to a resolution. I’d gone in thinking about right and wrong, and who promised what to whom in 2011. Justice! But every conversation seemed to come back to what we could actually make happen. It came back to leverage. Lawyers love to talk about leverage.

My guy was not good at that part of the game.

Then came job hunting. In 2026. In tech. In tech, over 50, no less.

A 2018 analysis by ProPublica and the Urban Institute found only one in ten older workers pushed out regained their previous earnings.

I don’t love those odds. It seemed to match what my inbox was telling me.

So we lived off the emergency fund. Then savings. Then credit cards. In that order, in about that many months.

And the entire time I was furious. At the lies. At the betrayal. At people I considered friends. There were plenty of long nights with a scotch and an argument nobody else was there to have.

But the fury felt somehow useful. Rage does a very good impression of productivity.

I’d wake up early and argue my case to the ceiling. I’d rehearse speeches for confrontations that were never going to happen. I’d head out on a walk and allow myself five minutes of hate. Ya know, just a little time to litigate the experience.

Those five minutes would become the entire walk.

And if you’ve been seriously wronged, I’d wager you’ve got a version of this. A conversation you keep rerunning. A person you’ve beaten in an imaginary argument forty times. Or perhaps just beaten.

Remember the Bad

Looking back, those first few months felt like a blur. I know I did things. I spoke at Seattle AI Week. My wife and I launched a business. We had the holidays.

But when I think about that stretch, the anger is what I remember first. And it takes some effort to recall everything else that was happening.

But a lot was actually happening.

I felt relief. Intense relief. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I didn’t have to spend my working days dealing with the same people and the same problems. I met wonderful people and I learned more in a year than I had in ages.

All of that was happening while I was miserable. I just gave the misery so much of my attention. That’s where gratitude started to mean something to me.

Truthfully, I’d always been a little suspicious of it. Count your blessings. Buck up. Get a tattoo about loving fate…

But it kind of felt like accepting defeat. Like agreeing that what happened was fine, cause look at all the good that came afterward. I wasn’t quite willing to do that. I’m still not. I haven’t forgiven the people who hurt me, and I’m in no hurry to start.

But I can be thankful for my life without signing off on what happened to it.

Robert Emmons, a psychologist known for his research on gratitude, offers a suggestion that seems counterintuitive: “Remember the bad.”

He explains that remembering difficult times can help you notice how your life has changed and appreciate what you have now. The contrast can make gratitude easier to feel.

I definitely didn’t need help remembering the bad. I was putting in considerable overtime on that front. But I wasn’t so good at noticing what was different.

I could tell you every detail of what I missed about my old life. The paycheck. The security. The feeling that I knew what came next.

What about the things I was relieved to be rid of? What about the possibilities I hadn’t had before? Those deserved some attention too. I could be furious about what happened and still be grateful for what my life was becoming.

Same Walk, Different Conversation

So I started a little trick.

Whenever I catch myself railing against the people who hurt me, I use that as a reminder to find something I am grateful for. The anger is going to show up anyway. Might as well give it something useful to do.

• “I can’t believe I let that guy gaslight me for years.”

  • Followed by: “God, I’m glad I don’t have to listen to him anymore.”

• “I took less pay. I left so much money on the table.”

  • Followed by: “I get to set my own rates now. I get a say in what my time is worth.”

OK, sure, this doesn’t magically fill the bank account. We’ve already established that Lamine Yamal helped fund Team Pharr for a while.

But it gives me somewhere else to go with the anger. And that matters.

The freedom to choose who I work with. The chance to build something with my wife. The fact that I no longer have to sit through a meeting listening to someone I don’t trust explain the importance of honesty. Lordy, those are amazing things.

I still catch myself halfway through an imaginary argument on a walk. But now I have a question to interrupt it:

What am I glad is different now?

Some days, the answer comes easily. Other days, I’m still pissed off when I get home. But at least part of the walk belonged to the life I’m living now.

In Conclusion

A year ago, I couldn’t have told you what came next. To be honest, I’m still a little fuzzy on that part.

But that company my wife and I started? We’re on track for $250,000 in revenue in our first full year.

Okay sure, revenue isn’t profit, and the credit cards from last winter haven’t paid themselves off. But the line on the chart points the right way, and for the first time in a long while I really trust it.

In a couple of weeks, we’re headed to Oregon, where I’m speaking at a conference. In October, I’m flying to Colorado for an offsite with new business partners. And I just signed our second major corporate AI training client of the year.

We have a healthy list of clients. An even healthier list of people actively cheering us on.

And I know who my people are.

I know who will buy us groceries after my wife has knee surgery. Who will drop me a line for no reason other than to see how I’m doing. Who will put my name forward when an opportunity comes up. Who will listen when I’m having a bad day, even if they’ve heard this particular bad day before.

For those people, I am so very grateful.

I often think of Arya Stark (for you Game of Thrones fans) who recites the names of the people she wants revenge on. It’s the Arya Stark kill list. Well, I’ve been working on my own version. Less murder-y; more thank-you texts.

For the people who showed up. Who made me laugh. Who helped me get through a week I wasn’t sure how to get through. Those are the names I repeat. I want to remember what they did. And I want to make sure they know what it meant.

A year after getting fired, there’s still plenty I’m angry about. You’ve just read a good chunk of it. But look at all these people and things I get to be grateful for.

Next time you catch yourself replaying something awful, ask yourself: What am I glad is different now? Who am I grateful to have in my life?

And for those who know me, I’ll let you in on a little secret.

If you get a random text from me on a Wednesday, odds are I was furious about something. Then I remembered how lucky I am to have you in my life.

And I just had to say hi.

Ever Forward,
— Derek (aka Chief Rabbit)

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