An Overthinker’s Guide to Happiness

When I was in my early twenties, I expected the universe of myself and wouldn’t be happy unless I met those expectations. I was going to be a world renowned author, one who would innovate on storytelling in a manner which would heighten people’s ability to understand other perspectives and potentially lead to world peace!

I wish I was kidding.

I would also only be happy if I was in a loving relationship with another human being, who would of course provide validation for my existence and solve me. One needs only a swift glance at my track record to see that I have inevitably had to make do. Oh, that old life lesson about needing to love yourself before you can love another? Entirely true. I took the long road to that little realisation.

These last few years, I’ve come to realise that success and happiness aren’t mutually exclusive. I’ve probably even talked about it a few times. Writing about life like some learned hermit is something of a habit of mine, I’m sure you’ve noticed. Today, I’d like to just lay out a few of the things which bring happiness to my quiant little life.

Hyperfixations! Usually geeky. Say, Spider-Man has sixty years worth of comics, what does that even look like from beginning to end? What MMO have I not tried yet? I never cared about Star Trek, shall I binge the entire franchise? Hey, how did England start, anyway? The Wheel of Time is an insanely long read, that’d take me years – better get started! What were the Romans like? Ooh, this one YouTuber decided to play OldSchool RuneScape without leaving a single path in the game, I’m going to binge that entire series. Wait, every Final Fantasy is its own universe? What are ALL of them like?

And so on and so forth. On and on it goes. The endless cycle of curiosity, discovery, and distraction repeats ad infinitum. And you know what? It’s bloody brilliant. It’s also likely a product of some neurodivergent trait or another, what with the single-minded obsession with which I dive down these rabbitholes, but if that ain’t normal I’m happy to be weird. If this is the trade-off for being unable to form meaningful human relationships (capital R), I’ll just find happiness in my fourth rewatch of Doctor Who and the subsequent rewatch podcast I make alongside it, thanks.

(Yes okay I’ll also try the human relationships thing, I’m WORKING ON THAT.)

Speaking of creating – CREATING! Christ. For a time after uni, I stopped pretty much all creative endeavours in what can only be described as a loss of meaning in life. No, not in a dangerous mental health kind of a way, but in a… forgetting who I am kind of a way. It wasn’t until my Nan passed, and I was inspired when hearing about her life that I took up the crafts once again. And blimey, I haven’t stopped since. Let me tell you, nothing quite hits like pouring your being into a creative endeavour and seeing it resonate with someone. I mean, I have a little trouble accepting praise for my written works, we have some stuff to work through there, but when my YouTube videos get big views or lovely comments, that’s a metric my brain can apparently convert into tingly sensations.

Speaking of my YouTube content, with yet another smooth-as-butter transition, making people laugh! I grew up with a severe lack of confidence, but even then I loved making my friends laugh. As I’ve grown and gained more self confidence, humour has become my foot-in-the-door for making new connections. And it’s not like I stand in front of a mirror and practice making jokes. It’s more of a subconscious effort of establishing shared ground with someone and knowing what makes them laugh. Is it weird to analyse that as a skill? Everyone does it. I’m just chuffed that I can do it too. I made an entire Discord server laugh the other day and it made me feel like a proper capable and loveable human being.

Obviously, family and friends. I say obviously, but I am extremely lucky in this department. I won’t go on about it for too long because they’ll all just get big heads and everyone else will skip this section. Love makes people happy? WOW HE’S SOLVED THE HUMAN CONDITION!

And, not to beat on this drum at every opportunity, but being bisexual and being out about it and just knowing that part of my identity. Before I fully realised I was bi I assumed being queer would be difficult, would make me somehow “other”, would make me unlike myself etc etc. Turns out that accepting who you are is a pretty euphoric process, and helps the self confidence thing too. Hurrah!

You know, now that we’re approaching the end of this blog post I realise it’s been a pretty shit guide on how to be happy. All I’ve done is tell you what makes me happy. That might not make you happy at all! But to recap, I’ve found happiness in unabashedly pursuing my passions, being creative without requiring success from myself, developing the confidence to make people laugh and form connections with them in doing so, and… you know what? Sometimes it’s just spending your day off doing absolutely nothing but eating comfort food and doing comfort things.

Does this mean Kristian is super happy and all his problems are solved forever? NO! I call into question whether anyone has ever just been completely happy and fulfilled. There’s always some unsolved problem. For me, there’s quite a few of them. But I wanted to write this blog post in response to a younger Kristian’s demands from life. I had impossible expectations from myself and was incredibly hard on myself for falling short of them. But had I demanded what I wanted for myself from anyone else I’d have been considered cruel and outright insane.

This has been an excercise in self-affirmation, but hopefully the message has gotten across to someone, somewhere, who needs it. You’ve heard it before, but try hearing it again: You are enough. Embrace the things which make you happy. Surround yourself with love. And laugh hard.