All the information you need is already out there, and I have this suspicion you have probably read a good deal of it. You probably know more about being happy than everybody else you know and yet you're not happy. You realize that if you're a smart rational agent you should just be able to figure out what you want to do and then just do it, right?

1. figure out what makes you happy
2. do more of those things
3. ???
4. happiness manifests itself

There is no step (3). So why does it feel more complex than it really is?

What is the kind of response you're really looking for when you start this topic? Do you (subconsciously) want people to just tell you to buck up and deal with it? Do you (subconsciously) want people to tell you not to worry and that it's all going to be alright? Or are you just in some kind of quarter-life crisis because you don't really see clearly where you're going with your life and the problems you have are just side-effects of that?

• Maybe you need to be held accountable for your actions?

• Maybe you need additional responsibility?

• Maybe you need a vacation?

• Maybe you need to grow as a person in another manner?

We can't answer these questions for you and you know we can't answer these questions for you. Yet you ask us anyway. It doesn't make sense.

Now, I can make a complete shot-in-the-dark guess about your situation and make the following assumptions:

1. you're in social isolation
2. you spend much time on intellectual issues
3. you're not producing, you're almost exclusively consuming intellectual stuff
4. you're not eating as well as you should
5. you're letting lazy habits chip away at your life on the edges
6. you tell yourself that there's nothing wrong with you and that you should just man up
7. you hate the fact that you procrastinate and yet you keep procrastinating
8. every time when you feel you're making progress it doesn't last and you regress every time to square one.
9. you have trouble making lasting changes in every single aspect of your life

Psychological help doesn't work because you don't need people to explain this stuff to you, you've done your homework already and you know all this.

I'd be happy to talk to you over skype if you want, we can talk about whatever you want to talk about. For some people talking about their problems really helps, especially if they otherwise bottle it all up.

What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this. The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is - here's the clincher - boredom...

The question you should be asking isn't 'What do I want?' or 'What are my goals?' but 'What would excite me?'

Remember - boredom is the enemy, not some abstract 'failure.' (T. Ferris)