I am getting happier now (life is getting better)

Usually, such realizations for me have everything to do with chemical states of hedonia, or individual things in my life that have enriched it. This time, it is genuinely not that I was not happy before, although it is not like this year has not been dotted with unhappinesses. Rather, looking back on the past year, I see how my life has taken a small and slow but noticeable sort of upward trajectory, in terms of quality, in terms of contentedness, in terms of calmness, in terms of sureness, in terms of self-awareness. In short it is a longer term sort of Getting Better that I feel like I am looking back on.

1  I know it must have started this year, when I decided I wanted to do more in my life, either at New Years at the making of resolutions, or watching Niall and Becky dispel my prior notion that in order to do research you had to give up some sort of life with which to do a work-life balance. I don’t think it felt like much changed then, partly because what followed was an intense bit of hell with PhD applications (which I can only be grateful for now, cos it has more than paid off), and partly because… I suppose things take a while, even after you commence with the making of effort. Hanging out with my coursemates, hanging out with NL people, doing the Festival Samaritans thing. Now it’s come to summer and that’s pretty much all I want to do, camp, experience the emotional high of good live music, have barbecues, go dancing all night. All this while I have a bloody dissertation to write. Don’t think I’ve ever been this un-focused before in my life. Only because, unlike just prior, I now have quite a solid life to do this whole work-life balance thing, with.

2  I know therapy must also have had something to do with it. It’s not even been particularly intense therapy, or even real therapy, but something about the therapeutic context of this sort of workshop, trying to get rid of the mind’s smoke and mirrors, trying to find better ways to react to events around me than the ways that I currently do. It’s that process, rather, of caring for yourself in a very active and deliberate way, in looking at all your natural inclinations that may not be helpful, and learning to get rid of them. Anyway. I shouldn’t overstate its effect on my life, because after all it’s only been a recent thing, and it’s not like I have too much horribly traumatic shit to work through. But I know it’s helped, in a small but quite good way, and I’m glad I gave it a shot.