Anon: the statistics are comforting. However well you click with someone, given the extraordiarily small number of people you’ve met in your life, there are inevitably hundreds of thousands of better matches for you. There are thousands you’d click with just as well, but who’d reciprocate. And there are even more you’d click with better still.

Finding them isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s easier than changing someone’s feelings towards you. And finding them isn’t always fun, but it’s more fun than hoping someone will settle for you, and that they don’t run into anyone they like more.

I think people get confused between “Of all the people I’ve met, this is the one for me.” and “Of all the 1 billion gender and age appropriate people I could meet, there is definitely no-one this good who would want to be with me.” The former is completely reasonable, the latter is absolutely absurd.

For a more nuanced (and scientifically proven) view on the topic, have a look at this Google Tech Talk by David Rock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M

Oh yes. But it resists so very, very hard…

90% of the time when I’m not happy what most cheers me up is… a glass of water. Because actually I was dehydrated, not miserable.

Found that as a hobby a year or so back, and it turned out I loved it. Which was interesting, as it was just tolerable previously. The miracles of not having a deadline or anyone to impress, I suppose.

31, win :P

@ Chris

It’s possible that you have a passion and don’t know how to realise it in the modern world: perhaps you’d like to be an adventurer, fighting goblins and righting wrongs. Well, there are no goblins per se, but perhaps something linked to travel, whether it’s righting wrongs as a volunteer (preferably a paid one) somewhere in Africa etc, or facing as-naughty-as-goblins children while teaching English in Asia… you might find something close enough to your passion to make you happy…

Also, what do you do if you don’t seem to have a true passion for any process?

I’m glad to see more posts about non-gaming stuff. Personally it’s the thing I get the most from, and they’re a hell of a lot more meaningful that…well…something about TF2.

I totally agree with what you’ve said here, but I’ll admit, it’s not really news to me! You should read The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell as he came to the exact same conclusions.

One of his main conclusions was that people focus on becoming happier so much that they convince themselves they are unhappy, making themselves more miserable in the process. But if you focus less on having a perfectly happy existence, you’ll realise you’re happy enough anyway.

Basically, so many people go through life looking at their neighbours grass and thinking “man, I wish my grass was that green” that they never stop to look at their own grass and feel happy with it.

Or something.

And I’m here reading your blog when I should be doing my uni work (I’ve decided to start studying again at 29)

In video game terms you could probably call number 3 the “You Will Want One More Turn And It Will Be Fun So Stop Wussing Out” rule because the same was true of GalCiv for a very long time for me.

That’s a brilliant way to put it, possibly the best I’ve seen. It’s funny that it’s something we all basically know but still manage to forget, everyone should probably have it tattooed to their arms.