Time passes when I’m productive. I feel free, happy to alternate between concentration and exploration. It’s the freedom of swimming, sunbathing, and dancing.

This happiness scares me. It seems like nothing has happened other than… being happy. These happy days stretch out across the horizon, towards tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow again, leaving traces of joy and obelisks of git repositories.

This joy is existential because it’s so insubstantial. Perhaps this is why Quants care so much about food and Tech Bros so much about being philosophical-intellectual-moral.

In these bouts of joy-induced anxiety, I recite mantras: The substantial is nothing more than reality as it is. No social or material reward are worth more than the joys of living. Quit worrying Warren. Stop thinking.

I doubt that these are true in some cosmic sense. It is this doubt that has led me here, writing. Through this, I have found that it is true that at these times, I want to be by the fireplace with the person I love, paying attention to them. I have found nothing, except for this overpowering feeling of the goodness of the world, that can absolve me of the Anxiety of Happiness.