I had a friend once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her name was Diana Krasteva, and she was one of the best people I have ever known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She used to tell me that I only called her when I was sad. And, if I am being honest, that was mostly true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t understand it at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back then, I think I believed the world owed me happiness. Not consciously, perhaps. I would never have said it out loud. But somewhere deep inside, I believed that life was supposed to be fair, that good things were supposed to happen to good people, and that when something bad happened, it was only temporary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I needed someone to tell me that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I needed someone to tell me that things would get better. That I deserved to be happy. That whatever was hurting at that particular moment would eventually pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diana was often that person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She died five years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And sometime after that, I learned something I wish I had understood much earlier: the world doesn’t really care about my happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn’t care about yours, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That might sound depressing. It isn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually, I found it strangely liberating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because if the world isn’t responsible for making me happy, then it isn’t responsible for taking my happiness away either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no cosmic account where someone else gets to withdraw from my happiness whenever they feel like it. No committee deciding whether I have earned another good day. No person, circumstance, failure, disappointment, or bad news that automatically gets to own what happens inside my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My happiness is my responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that means it is also mine to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve spent the last year trying to do exactly that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not by pretending that everything is wonderful. It isn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not by convincing myself that bad things don’t happen. They do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And certainly not by becoming indifferent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I still get angry. I still get disappointed. I still have terrible days. People still let me down. Life still finds ways to be unfair, sometimes spectacularly so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I’ve stopped handing over the keys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t want to spend my time explaining to the world why I am unhappy. I don’t want every disappointment to become a public trial, and I don’t want every person who hurts me to become the author of my story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, I want to notice the things that make me happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there are so many of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some are enormous. Some are ridiculously small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A good conversation. A stupid joke. A song I haven’t heard in years. A quiet morning. A cup of coffee. Something my daughter says that makes absolutely no sense and somehow makes perfect sense at the same time. The feeling of coming home. A beautiful sentence. A memory that suddenly appears for no reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But they count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every single day, every single hour, there is some little piece of happiness somewhere next to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And nobody can take all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They can take some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Life can take some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can lose things. People can leave. Plans can fail. The world can be cruel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But they can’t take all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that is enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this blog is going to be about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not because I have figured life out. I haven’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not because I intend to write some motivational manifesto about how everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes terrible things happen for no good reason at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But good things happen too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I want to pay attention to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe this blog will find readers. Maybe it won’t. I haven’t figured out how to make people read it, and honestly, I’m not sure I care very much yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, writing it is enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a diary that is both open and closed at the same time. A place where I can put things into words and leave them here, accessible to anyone who happens to find them, but somehow still protected behind the wonderfully useful veil of my unpopularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe someday someone will read these words and recognise something of themselves in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe nobody will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Either way, I will have written them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that, today, makes me happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear Diary,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today I was happy that I started you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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