Countin' Flowers on the Wall.

I bought a mood ring this weekend. This is because, diseased kidneys and all, I was up in Johannesburg, working at a SARS function – and believe me, a weekend with 400 tax collectors can leave one in urgent need of silly jewellery.

I also bought it because when mood rings were actually in demand, I was 12, and in those days 25 bucks would buy you two movies or a Spur burger and chocolate brownie, and somehow being at the cutting edge of Grade 7 fashion never measured up.

These days, however, I’m more gainfully employed, and fortunately able to afford both food and a vast array of totally pointless things. I try to exercise this right as often as possible.

Which brings me to a weird thing I noticed about this mood ring. Now, I know it’s all really about fluctuations in your body temperature (spent a few happy hours alternately tossing it into iced water and dangling it in front of the heater to observe the effects. Like a magic diaper baby, only with more colour variety, and no awkward gender stamp on the bum. Anyway.) But here’s the thing. When it’s on my body, it mostly hovers around sky blue (dozy, serene, relaxed). Yet when I eat, it immediately swings to a deep, satisfied indigo, which, according to the key, is “joyful, loving, amoreaux, romantico”. (And if my mood ring says so, it must be true.) The only exception to this rule has been right now, as I sit here stranded at the Wimpy in OR Tambo airport after my flight home was grounded, eating what is arguably the worst sandwich ever made. In response to this warm-plastic-and-monkeymeat horror, my ring has turned an awkward amber-red, translated as “aufgewült, unsettled, anxious, troublé, sin resolver”; a mood change not even Kulula could induce when they told me that, after a 21-hour shift and 7 hours’ sleep in two days, I would be placed on standby indefinitely.

It’s a curious thing, this, because it got me thinking about pleasure, and why we don’t spend more time seizing it in easy, accessible areas. The way I see it, happiness is like a great big bank. Here’s how it works: bad stuff = debits, good stuff = credit. If your debits exceed your credit, you will become unhappy.

Then you get the currency. Big bad things cost more than small annoyances. Big happy things give back more than small happy things. So here’s the thing. If you don’t have an array of enormous happy news items to stock up with (a wedding, the purchase of your dream home, sticking your foot out as Natalie Becker approaches the stairs) then you have to focus on accumulating a larger bank of small joys. And many of the most joyful small joys are the most pointless things, like buying a mood ring you did secretly want when you were twelve, or having liquorice for breakfast just because you can, or waking up early on a Sunday to run along the seaside, or emptying out an entire bottle of Shipmate Bubbles into your bathtub because there’s no one around to stop you. This is because duty is the opposite of fun, so the less necessary something is, the greater the fun injection.

This means, then, that you should absolutely not compromise on the little things that make you happy. We’re told not to sweat the small stuff; I think we should start. Don’t put food in your mouth that you don’t really love: if you have a sweet tooth, don’t bother with Beacon, buy Lindt. If you love pesto pasta with roasted pine nuts and pecorino and fresh spinach, spag bol in the bag is not good enough. Don’t read books that don’t grab you by the scruff of your neck and refuse to put you down: if you think The Grapes of Wrath is overrated (I do) give it the finger and read Harry Potter instead. If you don’t feel beautiful – not just okay, but beautiful – in what you’re wearing, don’t step out of your door until you’ve put on something that makes you feel amazing. If the gym freaks you out and you hate their playlist, get an mp3 player and take up a sport that you do love. Doing things you hate doesn’t mean you’re a hero, it means you’re to lazy to look for what you love. Chores are for kids with strict parents, and you’re all grown up now.

Incidentally, I think one of the biggest benefits of being a grownup is directly related to this; that for the first time you do really get to be a kid, something you can’t really do when you are young, because everyone is so busy telling you to grow up. I love getting older. I love that I can fill my life with the things only I want, and that I don’t have to explain it to anyone. I love that I can do all the stuff I wanted so badly when I was little. I love that I can wear tinsel wigs and coloured hats if I’m in a bad mood. I love that I can have Kir Royales for dinner or draw pictures on the walls or turn a perfectly good pair of socks into a puppet if I feel like it. I love that my bathroom is peppered with quotations that I like to read on the loo, and that nobody tells me to hurry up and stop hogging the facilities. I love that my parakeet attacks anyone whose shoes she doesn’t like (it’s true) or that I can open my doors to friends 24-7 if I want to. I love that my bookcase (which I only found out some years too late is actually made of stinkwood – oops) is now lime green because I happened to have the paint and needed some cheering up one gloomy afternoon. I love that the most expensive skirt I ever bought died an honourable death in a pool of mud when I got too carried away running races across a field after a formal dinner. I love that my shopping trolley bulges with all life’s essential items, like Nutella and lemons and reject Bonnie Tyler albums and balloons and champagne (which I keep in the fridge at all times because I believe life is there to be celebrated, and it’s stupid to wait around for Christmas).

I have been unhappy for long periods in my life, and now that I’m feeling better about the whole business, I refuse to compromise in areas where it doesn’t cost me much to be demanding. Occasionally I look at the balloons and party hats and streamers in my life and worry that the whole thing is turning a bit Michael Jackson, but mostly I just think I’m right. As human beings, we spend so much time compromising on big issues (relationships that aren’t good enough, but which we stay in because we are afraid of cutting ourselves loose and drifting out into the big wide unknown ocean; friends who feel too far away, but who we never say anything to for fear of appearing tense or clingy; jobs that don’t satisfy us but which we are afraid to leave because when you really chase a passion, failure hurts more) that I think it’s positively irresponsible not to seize happiness in the less challenging areas, where we know we can. Especially when it comes to the small things, where a little selfishness won’t harm anyone else. Refusing to compromise on the big issues in life can cause hurt to others; spraypainting your dustbin in a funky colour will not.

And because I seem to really like lists (something I only realized looking back over earlier blog posts), here is a list of things I refuse to live without, because in their small way, they are essential to happiness. I’d love it if you’d add your own.

1.Running along the Promenade on sunny Sundays in winter, listening to Belinda Carlisle and Barry White songs. The fitter you get, the better it is, because then you can sing along.

2.Pine nut, pecorino and spinach pasta. It takes 10 min to make and is so insanely delicious that I come over all funny just thinking about it.

3.Janis Joplin.

4.Good sandwiches with loads of tasty goodies in them. As the girls at gofugyourself put it, “This is why we are in favour of more flattering pants. More flattering pants = more sandwiches and far less agita from people squawking about your minor holiday weight gain. Also, more sandwiches = more happiness. It’s like one of the fundamental rules of basic math.”

5.Pyjamas.

6.Fiona Apple. She is pure poetry.

7.Heroes.

8.Kath and Kim.

9.Yoga.

10.Harry Potter.

11.Sister Crazy (the world’s most beautiful book).

12.Tabloid news from Romania. Romania is a screwed up place. My favourite news item reported a nasty incident where a wall collapsed on the minister of agriculture’s head. Instead of renovating the houses of parliament, government held an exorcism.

13.The International Society for Giant Pumpkins. (It’s real.)

14.Jewellery.

15.Beetroot.

16.Sentimental country songs.

17.Gothsinhotweather.blogspot.com

18.The Princess Bride/ Legally Blonde/ But I’m a Cheerleader/ The Wedding Singer.

19.Kid-type jokes (e.g. the muffin joke, the one about Snoop Dogg’s umbrella, the moose and the tortoise, or Sebastian the prawn. If I haven’t told you these yet, tell me and I’ll post them).

20.Weird Al Yancovic’s parody of Bob Dylan’s music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues.

21.The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

22.The lyrics to Subbacultcha.

23.Bebe’s exceptional upper arms. It makes me happy that somebody achieved arms like this.

24.Reading dictionaries and wikipedia.

25.Googling random statistics (largest-ever tiger, tallest-ever wave).

26.Imogen Heap.

27.Doing nothing.

28.Polar fleece.

29.Naps.

30.Muesli.

31.Sprinting.

32.Peaches.

33.Balloon animals.

34.80s rap.

35.Long swims out to sea with my dad.