I am not an expert on happiness, but I think I have come at least one relevant conclusion. Don't yet have it in wisdom-nugget form. The significant dichotomy between work and play, and their respective effects on a person's happiness, is that of the guiding force behind a person's actions. It has been made abundantly clear that no rote set of actions produces happiness, and this is true in many different contexts, such as political, monetary, leisurely, et cetera. At work, you do what you're supposed to do. There are places of employment where this is not the prevailing attitude, but I used the word 'work' here to mean the kind that weighs you down at least a little. And it weighs you down because you're doing what you're supposed to; you're exercising discipline.

Now, a tangent, which is funny if you really understand the point of this post. It begins with the question, what is the difference between a smart choice and a disciplined choice? For, surely, why would you exert self-control to make a stupid decision? This isn't ironic, you wouldn't do that. So then smart and disciplined should be one and the same, right? So I thought for a long time, until only recently. Discipline, by definition, is the self-subjugation of one's own desires in favor of some other virtue, which would not, by itself, motivate the same action discipline would. In short, it's making yourself do things you don't want to, like paying taxes or not hitting your kids. And I do agree that, in the short term, discipline is a useful tool, to get around immature impulses, and generally to just account for the sheer ballsfuck insanity that emotions can wreak sometimes.

But.

This is not meant to say that emotions are summarily an evil, because then you defeat the point. To complete the point of this tangent, a smart decision is one that most successfully achieves your desires. Note that this takes into account the fact that some desires are conflicting, and one must win out over the other.

So my point here is that emotion, or, rather, feelings, are not something to be fought like a disease; play is doing what you want, whatever that is. And it really doesn't matter what. All that matters is the satisfaction. It is the difference between slavery and freedom, since the functional differences are relatively small.

So my greatest mistake so far has been to act (at length) without ever actually asking myself what I wanted to do. In the absence of my own direction, I can only have been acting on another person's direction and for another person's reasons (mostly, my mother's). This vicarity cannot last in me, as it is now breaking down.

"It is better to live one minute as myself than a thousand years as anyone else."