Step one to happiness.

This is the foundation, apparently. First, I have to figure out what I want from life. Am I happy now? Well, I don’t really know. I’m not unhappy. Maybe I’m in limbo. That imaginary white place that I always confused with purgatory. Or are they the same thing? Not good, not bad. In between. A no-man’s land.

What’s going on in my life right now?

I’d like to stop obsessively bleaching my hair or tugging at my clothes when I feel uncomfortable. I’d like to be less shy in public, which would probably lead to more friends, and possibly more fun. I’d like to be less scared. I’d like to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life, and why I have a degree that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Grad school? Clinical, research, forensic? Maybe I wouldn’t chose any of those. Maybe I’ll go sideways into law, or run away and live in the rainforest. Half the people I know keep insisting that I find my soulmate before they run out of them, like this is some sort of Crate and Barrel annual sale and all the available men are fancy lamps. The other half are convinced that marriage is the first step down the doomed path of sorrow and a ruined life.

According to my brother, the way I’m reacting to all these things says more about me than the actual path I choose ever will. But he’s been reading a lot of John Green lately, and is incredibly partial to the quote about the way we imagine other people saying a lot more about us than it says about the actual person in question.

So I live in a state of panic. What’s wrong with that? This is Boston. We are an angry, panicked, rushing breed of people. Maybe that is the problem. Isn’t that why I was sitting on the floor of an airport compiling a list of ways to make myself happy? According to google, I must start here, at the beginning, with the basics. The icon beside this article has a lovely smiling lady who is just thrilled at the prospect of diving into a simple list of steps to happiness. She probably also loves cleaning the house and taking her nine children to the park in her minivan. Maybe I’m jaded. I need to add that to my negative list. But before that, I need a happiness list.

Identify what makes me happy and how this relates to who I am. This seems counter intuitive. Isn’t the point of this entire thing to figure out how to be happy? Find. 30 seconds of what makes me happy. And go.

• family
• friends
• my followers
• my dog
• making other people smile
• hugs
• musicmusicmusic
• rock concerts
• tattoos
• shopping
• coffee
• sunshine
• rain
• cute shoes

I think all I’ve learned is that I type slowly under pressure. I feel less happy with that mini panic of ‘oh god what do I like? What kind of person will that say I am?’

Moving on, who does this make me? According to Oprah’s list (hey, I’ve got a little bit of everyone on this thing) ‘True happiness is being faithful to your true nature. The better you know yourself—what it is you love, what inspires you, what you are made of—the happier you will be. When you forget who you are, something very strange happens—you begin to search for happiness! Happiness is your spiritual DNA. It is what you experience when you accept yourself, when you relax and when you stop neurosing about being a “size zero,” about “why he hasn’t called” and about “what I should be doing with my life.’

The thing is, I have no idea what that means. Be you. I get that, I do. But what does that mean? Who I am is what’s left after everything else is stripped away from me. But is a thirty second list of what I like supposed to identify who I am? I’m someone who likes family and hugs and shopping, but is that me? Doesn’t everyone like those things?

Things I’ve learned in this life and continue to live by that will hereafter be altered or made a permanent part of my life:

• There is no point in waiting for the traffic to die down. It isn’t going to.
• Things to be taken with a grain of salt: anything found on Facebook or Twitter; advice from the flighty friend you only see at the bar every two months but seems to have the perfect life; life lessons from anyone who is paid to give you advice.
• Things not to take for granted: advice from your mother on love; advice from your father on how to fix your oven; the war stories your grandparents tell you; the advice to slow down and look at life from the old man sitting on the park bench as you rush to a meeting; lyrics.
• It usually isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be.
• Better to be safe than fucked at the last minute.
• Always carry bandaids.
• Proper grammar and a stellar vocabulary go far.
• Be kind to everyone, not because you never know who they are and if they’re important in your life, but because you should always be nice.
• True altruism may not exist, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t volunteer.
• We all do things we don’t like.
• If you push a little further, the results you were looking for might be right around the corner.

Things I need to work on.

• Not taking the small things for granted.
• Saying ‘thank you’ and meaning it more.
• Five more minutes with your dog or family will not ruin your schedule to get somewhere, but they could make your day better.
• Stop rushing. It’s ruining your heels.
• Stop sniping at people.
• Stop letting other people’s bad mood seep into your life like a virus.
• Don’t take other people’s opinions of your choices so seriously. It’s your life.
• Stop trying so hard to fit and stay within a category. It’s okay to pick up a bestseller in the airport. It’s okay to buy a shirt that everyone else has. It’s okay that if when on shuffle, your music jumps from ACDC to Brand New to Katy Perry to Death Cab for Cutie.
• Communicate more. You’ll learn more than you think from other people - whether it’s that there’s a jam on 95, or that dude you’re thinking of talking to is married with a girl on the side.

Now I need to look at these lists every day this week and see what there is to tweak. Getting happy and reinventing your life is a lot of work.

What I've learned since I stopped drinking.

About six months ago, I woke up after three hours of sleep with a rolling stomach, a screaming headache, and the world sloshing around in front of me. I grabbed the dog and took him for a walk, hoping the morning air would revive me. Since I'm a victim of alcohol related early morning insomnia, the world was just waking up, and I was a part of it for once. I ran into bikers, runners, walkers (not of the undead sort) and even a group of teenagers playing basketball. They looked happy and healthy while I slowly moseyed along, trying not to throw up, squinting into the sun behind my sunglasses hiding last night's makeup.

I didn't have a firm grasp of the previous night, though I distinctly remember that it involved multiple glasses of wine starting at dinner, then more when we joined friends in a bar (at which some guy left an event shirt on my chair and I stole it), then leaving said bar at closing time and stumbling to another friend's apartment in an attempt to wake them up so they would come out and drink. They weren't amused. As I grew more stable and felt less like I was hanging over the edge of puke-ville, I realized I should send some apology texts, but no one was awake yet. I would love to have a morning when I woke up early to run the dog, then called my friends later and listen to their hungover moaning, and not be able to stay, 'oh yeah, me too, I've got a brutal headache.'

The boyfriend of five years who had dumped me right before the start of my senior year of college was still gone. I'd managed to graduate college with a great GPA, great friends, and a job I loved, but I was still drinking to make my life fun and exciting without him. The night was better when I drank. I laughed more. I was funnier. It was easier to meet guys and make friends. I slept better.

Once I stopped drinking, I realized none of these things were true. Here are so more that I learned:

1. The little bar I'm in will not get a better crowd as the night goes on. It's still me, my friend, and the traveling mariachi band of middle aged men.
2. The jokes I'm telling aren't funny.
3. I'm talking to a guy I would never talk to sober, while the right guy stands directly behind me.
4. I'm intelligent but no one would be able to guess that with the crap I'm slurring about.
5. The person I'm texting isn't interested in coming out to the bar at 1am. Sending 9000 texts in a row isn't going to help.
6. 2am is late enough to go home. There's no need to go searching for another place to party. Yes, everyone has had more than enough to drink.
7. I don't know why I was admiring the middle aged bartender who says she drinks two bottles of wine every night.
8. I have significantly more cash.
9. My hair looks better when I'm not drunkenly smooshing it around.
10. I shed fat like it's my job. Also, my skin looks great.
11. I never fall in my stilettos sober, so apparently the shoes are not to blame.
12. 'You're not drinking? Why not?!' is only said one or two times. Then everyone gets bored with it and happy to have a DD. Also, no one knows that my glass of diet coke has no alcohol in it.
13. The serious thing my friend is telling me seems important without the hazy numbness of three margaritas. I can listen and comfort. I can ignore the stupid shit she's spewing about how all men are secretly great great great grandsons of the devil.
14. I know if I'm actually connecting with a guy, not just mutually agreeing to makeout in a drunken blur.
15. You get far more shit done the next day without a hangover, even if it's just fun stuff like going out to breakfast.
16. You know what it looks like outside before noon.
17. You will bond with the wingman while your loud, drunk friend hooks up with his loud drunk friend. The wingman is almost always the better choice of the two. You will sit in the corner and discuss your favorite books. Your friend will dance on the table.
18. You have to find better things to do with your time. Sure, that seems challenging at first, but now that I am no longer buzzed from 8 till bedtime, I can organize my closet, find a new favorite TV show, hit the gym, play with the dog, write a novel in all my spare time.
19. When your sole focus isn't finding a bar or going to the liquor store, your friends and you need to find new things to do. You can end up learning to rock climb, make pottery, find the best cupcake bakery in the city, or go running at midnight.
20. With the mask of alcohol lifted, you notice who your real friends are, who you truly have fun with, and who you want to spend your sober time with.

We had my nieces over for Thanksgiving, my oldest brother's two beautiful little girls. The oldest just turned thirteen, which everyone knows is a lovely age for self esteem. Just seeing her walk around hiding behind her hair and holding her arms around herself reminded me so much of that age, when you don't understand your body yet. That age when you're so awkward that it actually hurts. You feel like your skin fits wrong and your insides are just going to be exposed at any second.

All I could tell her, and I'm not sure if she listened, was that eventually, you're going to grow to be comfortable in your body, but you have to work for it. You might still despise your hips or think your boobs are weird or your butt is too big, but you it's your body, and you can't live like the awkward, scared thirteen year old who flinches every time someone tells her she looks nice.

If you won't let yourself move out of that stage, you can't ever really grow.