“Someday I’ll be happy” is a deal that keeps moving the date.

Conditional happiness keeps renewing its conditions. The arrangement is that once a certain thing arrives the good part starts; then it arrives, the feeling lasts a week, and a new condition takes its place. The license, the acceptance letter, the apartment. Each one works, briefly, and then the date moves again.

Look at the last thing you were sure would settle it and ask how long that actually lasted. Then take something small and good you have been postponing until after the next milestone, and do it this week.