Is it a wall or a void?

Kathy Sierra has this graphic that shows how you can improve your customer’s passion for your product. She describes the barrier between what you are, what you can get, and what you could be as a wall.

I actually wonder if it’s a void, not a wall.

Let’s take this from a personal life perspective (because that’s where I’m coming from tonight). I think that for me, in my current point in my life, it’s not a wall I need to break through, but more of a void I’m trying to fill. I have a nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be trying to fill it, but rather bridge my way across it. It’s as if every time I throw a shovel of something into the void to fill it that I’ve taken the filler from somewhere else in my life.

I buy stuff to feel like I’m going to do better now that I’ve got this ‘thing’. But that means I’ve taken away from savings. Of course, it’s rather easy for me to rationalize spending money on things as an ‘investment’. But I’m not sure it’s always true.

I get bored or fed up with certain events in my life, so I stop doing that thing and move on to something else. Instead, should I try to improve that point? Instead of quitting, should I try to push harder to close the gap I see in front of myself?

I feel really frustrated at work right now. I feel like I could do so much there, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to push hard enough to get the right people (see: people in Authority) to say, “Yes, Josh is right, and we really should go that route.” Maybe I’m just not organized enough. Maybe they don't feel like I have the experience and knowledge of a given subject to be accepted as a person to be listened to. I understand that I won’t have 100% of my ideas and suggestions accepted. The hard part for me is to deal with the fact that maybe only 1% will get accepted.

I don’t mean to say I have all the answers. Higher Power knows I don’t. At the same time, I work hard to learn and understand the world around me. I want to know how I can improve other peoples’ lives. I want to know how to become a person of note and to be seen as a guy that they couldn’t do without.

Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m trying too hard to improve other peoples’ lives, instead of working on my own first. I feel like it’s what I need to do to bridge that void. But maybe I’m just misleading myself.