Happiness

As I spend time re-learning how to love myself during this period of depression (that is slowly improving for the record), I’m coming away from my time with an interesting new set of ideals to follow on how I feel happiness.

Routine & Structure

The most important and the most boring, getting something done each day is so vital to avoiding my bedrot. Leaving Uni made for a lot of free time and a lot of time to waste. That sounds harsh but it is true in my case, all that time felt so burdensome, after 15 years of structured weeks, having it all free was like drowning. Obviously it was good at first but like a holiday, you can’t stay there forever. I believe with time I would be able to fill that time and be content and happy without anything to take up my day like a job, but right now, in the world we live in, it’s more beneficial to get some money. Nonetheless I do not have a job at the moment despite trying, which leaves creating my own routine, a very difficult thing! But something that can be done slowly, just doing one thing a day, the washing, cooking people dinner, going on a walk, something to split this day from the last, did so much for my mental health, to avoid feeling like every day was sinking into the last.

Routine and Structure may not bring me happiness directly, but they do lay the groundwork for it to blossom.

Roleplay

Fantasy as a genre has only recently gotten its claws into my imagination, but it has dug down hard. I can feel entertained for hours just imagining a small dark fantasy dungeon crawl, painting in each detail in my mind as a battleworn warrior skulks the damp halls, torchlight illuminating creatures long forgotten in the dark. This type of imaginative daydreaming is not new to me, nor what has helped me be happier, but it did lead to my realisation.

In bed on a cold night in mid-winter, I was looking out the window at the forest beside my house, as I closed my eyes I pushed everything else away but the trees, and imagined myself a lone rogue wanderer, the moon lighting my path as I found a large tree on a mossy hillside to lay my pack against, curl up in my cloak and fall asleep under.

This image was so immersive and satisfying to me, as I curled up under my own blankets. Over the next few days I reflected on that moment and realised just what power roleplay had for me, its ability to earnestly express minute desires that oftentimes are not feasible or less glamorous in real life.

My girlfriend has been exceptional in this regard, as a fantasy and TTRPG nerd she has been very willing to explore these little moments I wish to call upon. We may lie in bed and chat in character as a knight and princess, or contextualise a walk we take together as an adventure between kingdoms. This isn’t the most effective discovery I stumbled upon when relearning what made me happy (mainly due to its rather circumstantial nature), but it is very fun and helps improve my improvisation and imagination visualisation, which is always a plus.

Childish Indulgence

I have a belief that what you enjoy as a child fundamentally influences what you enjoy for the rest of your life, not in that you can’t learn to love new things, but that what you loved back then will never leave you.

During 2020 when I was (despite the state of the world) the happiest I’d been, I had a personal set of convictions that I would follow as I interacted with people, that I be earnest, honest and brazen. All slightly different ways of saying the same thing but their distinctions mattered. This earnestness manifested in not hiding myself from others, which was fantastic and fundamentally important to any true friendship, but I did not take these convictions and look inward with them until last year.

I discovered Tokusatsu, and more specifically the series Garo last year and fell utterly in love with its campy but intensely earnest execution of the Tokusatsu medium. Loving this show among other things like watching Shin Kamen Rider, some Kamen Rider Black, using my girlfriends LARP swords, getting into fantasy TTRPGs, it made me realise the joys of engaging with things I had pushed aside as I grew older for seeming immature. Going “Wham wham, slash slash slash” and spinning around in a circle talking about how cool and epic something I’m imaging or watching is fills my heart to bursting with energy and passion.

I often have trouble expressing how I feel about things without taking a lot of time to sit and process my thoughts, which often ends up detaching me from my emotions, but this! This is pure, unfiltered expression. Engaging with this media bubbles up in my chest that passion and love that is so hard to put into words and can only be properly felt through jumping around and dancing (At the moment this media for me is hellboy, spawn and deadlock, they make me go woo yeah oh yeah).

A side-note on emotional neutrality

My psychologist pointed out that I have a tendency to push through emotions quickly, be it good or bad, in an attempt to return to the comfort of neutrality.

This is true! It was honestly a bit revealing, I don’t let myself sit with happiness for long, it felt indulgent. What I was just describing is something I would actively suppress, and still often do if I don’t catch myself. I view so many things through an analytical lens, trying to decipher or make sense of things, so much of any conversation I have is just analytical thoughts about things I watched or did, I never let raw emotion through, it has to be filtered by analysis. I’ll talk about a movie I liked, and I’ll say what it made me feel, but often to discuss how it made me feel that, or how my feelings reflect on its production.

If I let raw emotion through, it’s messy. It’s me bouncing around going “oh and when this and it was like blam blam oh so cool and like when this happened woooah that was sick”. Even as I write this I want to suppress those feelings! My brain is saying “Because saying that says nothing, it simply does not encourage discussion and further conversation”, but like, maybe I’m just embarrassed about it, why shouldn’t I be allowed to just yell about things I like.

And to be fair it’s not like my analysis isn’t also me expressing love for something, it’s just more subdued, like I said, I return to neutrality.

There isn’t really a conclusion with this one, I’m still working it out, I’m trying to let myself feel more, not return to that comforting neutral state, we’ll see if it helps.