Own your brand of happiness

This morning I naturally woke up, excited, at about 4am.

After letting my confused dog out, I made a flask of tea and took my pre-made breakfast out of the fridge. (Thank you, me.)

I have no calls on the calendar today. I love coaching, but I equally enjoy the days I keep clear for deep work.

I spend a couple of hours organising some notes in Obsidian on a new essay series about “Full-Contact Living.” I have 4 or 5 notes that I’ve been frantically updating over the last few weeks, and I need to distil them down into one index.

This is one of my favourite things to do. Collecting ideas, making connections and putting them into narratives. With tea, in silence.

After that, I meditate for a bit. The dog is just about awake so we head out. Today’s training is rucking, so I put 17.5kg on my back and lace up some new Salomon boots that I’m excited to try.

It’s very quiet out. I’m listening to another brilliant talk by Adyashanti called “Already Free” and dictating a few more notes into my phone, over heavy breathing.

Part of my training is stomping up and down hills with this weight on my back, so I do that a few times. During the last climb, I hear birdsong that I don’t recognise, which is rare these days. I get Merlin out and it guesses Lesser Whitethroat, but then settles on Greater Whitethroat. Wow, I’ve never IDed that one before.

We get home after a 5km stomp and I make a second breakfast. I feel so energised after getting a morning workout in. More tea is in order.

Then I sit down. Today is dedicated to one major task, with a few other life admin bits scattered around the sides.

I open the Time Out app to remind me to take 20-second breaks every 20 minutes, and then I submerge myself.

I start tweaking code and copy on my new coaching landing page. I love building pages for the web. I’ve been using ChatGPT to help with the front end and it’s looking great. Thank god I never have to tweak CSS again manually.

I make a lot of progress and things come out better than I expected. It’s nearly ready to push live.

After lunch, I nap. I appreciate naps a great deal, especially as they used to be so hard for me to land.

I work at a slower pace afterwards. I’m writing this at 5pm now. It’s pleasing to simply describe a day. I pause to listen to the fountain trickling in the pond and birds chirping on the feeder.

This has been a wonderful day.

Other people might be asking: Note-taking? Carrying heavy things? Where are the other people?

Some people enjoy lots of time alone. Some like to spend it absorbed in conversation. Some people have a strong intellectual bent; others prefer concrete work. Personality types vary so widely, as do the little things that spark joy.

Stop worrying about what your happy place should look like. Stop comparing it to other manufactured scenes on Instagram. Stop believing it always has to be better.

Own your brand of happiness, no matter how weird it looks to others.