Violet’s Guide To: Happiness

I’ve always dreamt about being a self-help guru, telling struggling people to “get a grip!” while I sip from a cocktail in my mansion. And, after sensing the less than amazing mood on Camfess recently, I realised I couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste.

Is happiness a joke to me? Not at all! (Why would you think such a thing?) This article contains some serious stuff, I promise. At least, a little serious. The best I could do anyway.

Happiness: ten cheap, quick and easy hacks

Laugh

I very rarely laugh naturally (and when I do it’s more of a snort), so I make sure to schedule at least one unironic “HAH” per day. I do it as forcefully as I can to clear my lungs of any excess sadness.

Don’t try to be better than everyone else

I learned this lesson the hard way, aged five weeks, when I decided to be better than the other babies and learn how to roll over. The result was that I rolled off a counter – onto the floor – and ended up with a five-inch crack in my head … Luckily there was no lasting damage (that I’m aware of), but since then I have made sure to aim for mediocrity in everything I do.

Adopt weird names online to spice up your mailbox

I honestly can’t stress this hack enough. Here are some of my favourites:

Compare yourself now to yourself aged 12

Me-now feels super accomplished just thinking about the state of extreme existential confusion and puberty-induced awkwardness me-then was in. Some of my most brilliant behaviours back then included: not telling anyone that my eyesight sucked for a whole year because glasses were embarrassing, swearing so much that my parents began threatening to send me to “An English Boarding School” (hell on earth), and trying to shave the hair on my arms because “no one else had that” and accidentally slicing my thumb with the razor … I think you get the picture.

But if you somehow were not like me aged 12, then:

Learn from prehistoric-you

“Now, does prehistoric-you worry about their latest supervision essay?”

Imagine yourself in a dark forest, throwing sticks at woolly mammoths or getting chased around by dinosaurs – it doesn’t have to be prehistorically accurate. Now, does prehistoric-you worry about their latest supervision essay? Or spend time agonising about that thing they said last week that was clearly unfunny and maybe a little bit offensive? Well, of course not! Prehistoric-you has better things to do, and so does modern-day-you.

Write some poetry

This is a great activity if you literally have nothing better to do. It’s really not that difficult, as long as you

have shitty grammar ;

and press

return

a lot

Send your poetry to random publications (the more the better!)

I recently joined the Facebook group “Cambridge Arts” and found a huge number of random art/poetry publications. And if even the smallest, most unknown poetry magazines in Cambridge for some reason choose to reject you (...), you can always send your work to Camfess or Kindbridge or Cumbridge – depending on your style.

Hype yourself up

It doesn’t matter if your poems were rejected from Cumbridge. After all, you were born, you’ve survived up until this moment and now you’re almost done reading this article! Cut yourself some slack. Oh, and by the way:

Get A Grip!

It’s self-explanatory and applies to every conceivable situation.

Just be happy – or not (I dunno)

Yes, I ran out of ideas. No, you don’t get to judge me – being a self-help guru is hard! And, if I’m completely honest, I’m actually beginning to feel like this whole happiness thing is slightly overrated. It’s like – “let me wallow in sadness for once!” – is that too much to ask?

Final note:

If this article didn’t make you utter even a single unironic “HAH”, I would like to offer you my happiest, most insincere apology.