As a clam

I am happy today. I think I was happy yesterday too, maybe I’ll be happy tomorrow. I certainly was not happy a month ago. I vividly remember being depressed. Or what I call ‘depressed’, the PHQ-9 might call it ‘moderately depressed’. My wife asked if I had taken vitamin D recently. Seasonal symptoms of Scandinavian January tend to get me around this time, so this was well-intentioned and probably astute. But when I’m moderately depressed, I feel like this is a crucial part of my personality and condition. A core ingredient to my identity, an inevitable swing of the pendulum. When the pendulum stops swinging, I will stop existing. Nothing vitamin D could cure, and the mere suggestion shows that she really doesn’t get me.

Of course, it’s probably me that doesn’t get me and I anxiously bristle at the idea that anyone knows things better than me. At least things that I should know. So I’ve taken my vitamin D, I’ve continued working out, I’ve upped my daily calories from an extreme deficit to a slightly less extreme deficit, I’ve been social and tried to practice good sleep routines. And now I’m happy! Is there a causal relationship? Maybe, but probably I’m happy because I’ve spent irresponsible amounts of money on new hobbies. I was moderately depressed because I had nothing new and shiny to give me joy. Or the other way around? And why is it so much easier to write about being unhappy?

Pharrell Williams doesn’t like that song, or does he?

Pharrell Williams has given some almost-recent interviews about Happy, you know the song. He started talking about how this was not the song he wanted to make, but the villains in charge at faceless-big-media-corp-Dreamworks-Disney-whatever kept rejecting his masterpiece drafts for the happy song in Despicable Me 2. He started talking about it many years after people forgot that this song was from Despicable Me 2, long after he had become defined by this song, after it became the background noise of capitalism in dying malls. After it had grown legs, moved out to live its own life, grown more legs, become a monster, grown more legs and swallowed humanities ability to view it as anything but a pulsing abomination of music and happiness. After Pharrell Williams himself forgot how it was to live in a time where he could see the sun behind the shadow of the looming pile of legs that it had become. So one has to take his recent attitude towards Happy and its birth as a sarcastic response to people rejecting his lovely, secular, harmless, artsy, valuable other drafts with a grain of proverbial salt. But also, one has to actually read what the man says and not what Redditors read from headlines on Business Insider. Here is Pharrell Williams talking to NPR’s Ari Shapiro in October 2024 (full transcript of the interview at NPR):

Yes, PW says the song came not from a happy place, but a sarcastic, maybe even spiteful and frustrated place. But he also says that when he beheld his creation, he wasn't disgusted. He doesn't begrudge people their enjoyment of the song. He doesn't have much more to say about it. I think there's something fundamentally relatable to me in both sentiments. On one hand, people's desire to turn *Happy* into a forced, cynical delivery to the gods of commodified mcdonaldsy franchise entertainment. On the other hand PW's concise rejection of that reading and unhappiness in general in 'if that's what this takes, fine.' I blissfully choose to ignore the alternative interpretation of his answer. 'You'll take it whatever way you get it' and 'If that's what it takes' may also refer to him finally getting paid and left in peace by the stooges at the animation factory.

If that song grew to a humongous pile of cash in the accounts of some company that fuels its inhuman exploits, but it also made people happy, fine. Those companies would have found a way, it’s what they do and most alternatives make people miserable. If more vitamin D is what it takes, fine. If it’s workouts and sleep and being social and skinny and going to therapy and reflecting, fine. If it’s more hobbies and more stuff, fine. I want to be happy. I want other people to be happy. I hope Pharrell Williams is happy. I think. I don’t want to google the horrible shit he might have done or said otherwise.

A convenient list of hobbies!

Anyway, here are some amendments to that long list of other hobbies from last year’s eponymous post.

Video Games - This was included in the last list, but I recently got interested in it again. Old School Runescape and Minecraft are two huge games that I had some brief rekindled affairs with recently. I set up my own Minecraft server on a Ubuntu VM from Hetzner, which was a fun experience and is cheaper for more power than dedicated hosting services. And you can install all kinds of other things on the server. I set up daily backups of the world to my Google Drive. Otherwise, I’ve been playing Mewgenics (love it!) and the Monster Hunter Stories 3 Demo. Really looking forward to MHS3, Pokopia and Slay the Spire 2 launching in March. Formula 1 will also start up again, I won’t have time to do all the fun things in March!
#mastery #toy #social

Colouring - Obviously I did a lot of colouring when I was a kid. Trying to recreate those cozy vibes of colouring with R as teens (just like crochet) is certainly part of why I gave adult colouring books another shot after a brief attempt with alcohol markers failed last year. I went back to pencils, the tool my hands are most familiar with and learned techniques like blending, shading and layering from Youtube University. I also had a lot of fun colouring with my daughter and just zoning out without trying to be very aesthetic about it. It’s a nice thing to do while watching TV or listening to an audio book.
#pretty #craft #collecting #toy #skill

Diamond Painting - A lot like colouring, I had my eye on it for a while but always found most available motives very cheesy. Had a crack at it with a small unicorn and princess themed magnet diamond painting set with my daughter. At first she got very frustrated and I had fun just finishing the small magnets on my own, but for the last one she got really into it again and we worked together, which was great quality time. I am now working on my first ‘real’ one (20x20 cm, 23 colours) and found out that you can order any motif from Ali-Express very cheaply. So I ordered two small ones as a test, we’ll see if cutting out the middle man and using my own pictures works or if I finally get scammed. I have been ordering from AliExpress for 10 years now and have never had a bad experience. And now that Temu and Shein are around, Ali almost seems like the reputable option! #pretty #craft #collecting #toy

Running - I mentioned this and weight loss in my last post, but I’m very happy that, unlike Runescape, I’ve stuck with my daily walks and at least biweekly runs, depending on how well my legs recover between runs. Today I managed my first 5 k (well, 4.87, but I would have managed 5) and I feel that my goal of consistently running 5 k by summer and managing 10 k by the end of the year are achievable. I am quite proud of myself for establishing an actual daily routine that sticks around for multiple months and isn’t a vice (looking at you, YouTube Shorts).
#health

Weight loss - Same as above. Although I feel that unlike running, my prior motivation for weight loss by deficit eating, which was partially negative emotions and obsessive habits has gone in the ‘wrong’ direction. I’m less negative and obsessive but adherence feels like it’s under threat. I’ve increased daily calories, had a maintenance week in January, and am increasingly making exceptions. I think objectively I’m still on track but it feels less pure, less strict. My weight loss is impressive and steady, but I’m only half way to my goal and I am scared of stagnating before I reach it. I think that’s just anxiety. The goal isn’t set in stone, my progress so far is great in itself, I look and feel awesome and I am stubborn enough to reach my goal regardless. Maybe later in the year than my July deadline, but I will get there. I just can’t help noticing that registering calories and looking at all the numbers is no longer fun in itself. That the hobby is becoming a chore. Which for other hobbies means that their (temporary) end is near. But this isn’t just a hobby.
#health

House Plants - I hated house plants with a passion for most of my life, because of the fungus gnats and other insects they invite into the home. Last year I got sucked back into aquarium-YouTube and made two terrariums in jars with my daughter. Luckily we don’t have space for an aquarium. This lead me to think about insects in a different way, as part of the ecosystem and got me interested in growing media and soil structure and I re-potted all our house plants (four at the time) into bigger pots, a chore that we put off for a while. Considering that my work revolves around many of these topics, it’s quite funny that I never felt any private interest for them before now. The demise of one of the terrariums and thriving of the other, which housed a snail for the whole autumn (our first family pet!) gave me joy. May she rot in piece.

My interest in how the plants were doing in their new pots, lead me taking over their care from my wife. This turned out to be horrible for them. I overwatered our ZZ and then chopped off all but one of its shoots because I thought it was sick (it was overwatered). A similar fate befell the Monstera adansonii which I trimmed to a stump. A tiny Hypoestes phyllostachya consisting of four plants that my daughter picked at the shop was repotted into three giant pots to ‘give it space to grow’ and misidentified as a Fittonia. The last remnants of the most mature plantlet, now back in a small pot are still fighting for their life. The only member of our plant household that survived my ignorant rampage of supersizing pots and overwatering gleefully without so much as a wilted leaf was our large Heptapleurum arboricola.

This horrific failure as a plant parent didn’t sit well with me. I have a PhD in Plant Sciences (accidentally, I’m more of a molecular biologist). Although I am on the fringes of plant science and know enough others with the same qualification to know that that is not a sign of any kind of competence in anything, not being able to keep succulents alive felt like an outsized personal failure. So I did what I do and watched a lot of Youtube videos on house plants and fungus gnat management, I got some plants for my office and then I got obsessed. Yesterday my wife let me loose in the garden centre and now our kitchen is a plant nursery, grow lights and everything. So many plants!
#collecting #equipment #pretty #mastery

I am happy. If all this is what it takes, fine.