I was honestly, for the most part, much happier before getting involved, but I'm certainly more effective now.

Perhaps you have a metavalue favoring effectiveness over happiness: you value valuing effectiveness. But isn't happiness the terminal value, effectiveness the instrumental value?

Usually people don't expressly strive for happiness because doing so tends to defeat the project (as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his book about achieving happiness), but it doesn't change that happiness (almost by definition) is what they (and you) ultimately strive for.