I've come to realize that the reason I wrote this post was not to discuss the ethical systems at all. I'm not trying to discuss a general guideline for morality. I'm merely analyzing what leads humans in practice to make decisions. I think that happiness and goodness belong in the same category, and that this has to do with where to draw the boundary. I think the difference in practice between how a professing virtue ethicist acts and how a professing consequentialist acts is that the virtue ethicist tends to make more decisions on a subconscious level, while the consequentialist tends to make more decisions on a conscious level. Comparatively speaking.

Edit: I've tweaked the article a bit to better reflect this idea!

I still hope and dream and love and all of those nice, warm fuzzy things; I just know what they are now and what caused them, as opposed to them being mysterious.

Yeah, same, I think :) Any discontent I feel about that is on an understanding level, not an emotional level. Or rather, I didn't fully understand the cause, but thanks to your explanation, now I understand a lot better. I think I'm going to change that heading.

I used to feel like this world was different than the world that I thought I lived in because of that whole "thief" thing I talked about near the beginning of the article. Coming to the conclusion that I did about goodness being a universal terminal value has helped me sort things out in my mind and acknowledge that I can follow my "conscience" without considering myself "irrational" for sometimes doing stuff, like effective altruism, that inefficiently optimizes my personal happiness.