It’s so cheesy when you say you want to be happier. People will laugh that you’re too general. “Focus on something solid, like ‘working out more’ or ‘read better than an army of half-finished Shakespeare plays’” is what so-called moral experts might say. But that’s not quite right. It implies that happiness is revolving around one thing, an activity or behavior. It also implies that you’re already happy, and just sharpening the metaphorical blade. If happiness was a blade, I’d have a butter knife, or a rose thorn. I’m a hormonal teenager with a grand total of five maybe-friends that live less than two hours away. I don’t have time to work out or finish books. I hardly have time to breathe.

Breathing is so important. It should be logical but sometimes we forget. If you swim you forget to count your strokes and suddenly you forgot if you’re on a breath. If you play an instrument you forget to breathe in the quarter rests. If you draw you forget to breathe after the dust of the charcoal has settled, or after the paint had dried. If you sing you forget that that note ever ended. I have to end this list here because I don’t have enough career or life experience to list more, and I’m forever lost in my own liquid creativity. You get the idea.

Sometimes we plunge too deep in life and suddenly we forget that air is a thing we need until we’re told not to and we stand at the bottom of the pool and stare up with watering eyes and burning lungs and suddenly the urge to fight to the surface and gulp that sweet, heavy air claws at your very stomach.

You have to breathe not just with your lungs, but with your life. Deep, slow breathes. The ones where your shoulders lift and your arms tingle and people stare at you weird.

There was a point in my life, about the winter or 2014-15, were for the most part my recreational activities consisted of rocking in a corner, almost literally. That’s like taking tiny, hyper breathes that make you lightheaded. That’s not that great. Even lying face down on a bed is better than rocking in a corner, because that means you got off the floor and propelled yourself far enough from it that you we laying on it, instead of hanging off it. That’s great! That’s progress! Just make sure you make a little cave for your nose to breathe.

It’s not important that someone else is out there doing cartwheels (the past me could do that, look at me now). It’s all relative. If someone just went from a cleaver to a butcher knife, fine. But you? You got off the floor today! You went from a butter knife to a sharper butter knife! You doubled your happiness level! I’m so proud of you. If you keep improving, pretty soon you’ll be Excalibur. Don’t listen to those who say you’re too general. You got this. Wear those brighter colored clothes. Take those pretty photos. Draw those almost-identical ¾-facing-to-the-left bust portraits. Write that subpar poetry. Take that, exercisers! I smiled twice today!

Once you stop holding your breath, you can split the world with your happiness.