I end most days the same. Feeling like shit.

I can’t see what’s been achieved.

Exercised. Conscious of what went in my gob. Survived the poonami from the small, canckled, loud, obnoxious, balding lady who recently moved in. Uninvited.

None of it seems enough, whether it’s day one or day one thousand.

I present the hedonic treadmill.

“Also known as hedonic adaptation, is the tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness after major positive or negative events or life changes.”

It makes you happy when you’re unhappy. Unhappy when you’re happy.

You bask in the fleeting happiness it hands you — right when you need it most.

Then you start counting the seconds until you’re back to unhappy again.

Except now it’s worse. You’ve just been reminded what happiness actually feels like.

You continue living the lie of when I do/get/achieve this... I’ll be happy for longer.

You flog yourself to the brink. Every single day.

Forget about all the lashings you took.

You toss and turn in bed, ruminating on the one you didn’t.

The secret to jumping off the treadmill sits on the other side of it.

The workout you didn’t do. The kale and farts you didn’t gobble up. The important email sitting in drafts. The lady’s soiled nappy you dodged.

Always one more thing that would’ve supposedly made it count. Effort will always outweigh the reward—no amount of lashings changes that.

Weeks or months earning it. A moment feeling it.

The time it takes will always dwarf the time you get to keep it.

Plenty of my own fuel comes from proving people wrong.

Every slight. Every put-down. Every manufactured arch-nemesis.

Money, time, happiness — being used up to throw darts at the board of a thousand faces.

The pounding has to keep happening either way.

But the fuel needs to come more from self-fulfilment than from proving them wrong.

The lashing is for them. Taking a break for happiness and fulfilment must be for you.

George Bernard Shaw had two tragedies. One’s not getting your heart’s desire. The other’s getting it.

Your heart’s desire does not exist at the end of that final lash. Getting it doesn’t feel like arriving. It feels the same.

There is no way off the treadmill.

Day one will feel the same as day one thousand. Regardless of how much success you’ve had by then.

Bask in your fleeting happiness. Fulfilled that you let it happen.

A job done.