The hedonic treadmill, theories on happiness and where it comes

from, the impacts of money and marriage on happiness-- there's

plenty of material here for your re ection.  What got your
attention?  What changes might you make in your attitudes and
behaviors?

For the longest time I thought that fame and prosperity would
ultimately make me happy if I could only develop the skills to
reach them. And in all honesty they probably will if I ever do
become successful with my work, but not if I’m dependent on
them. This idea of wanting to be famous started for me in middle
school once I got social media and decided I wanted to be a
photographer. I would see other photographer and lmmakers on
instagram posting their work and it looked so cool, I wanted to
do the same thing. It was only a hobby really until junior year of
high school. Billie Eilish was just starting to get really big in 2018,
and I remember being so shocked that someone only a couple
months younger than me could make music and become so
famous so quickly. That year I decided that I was going to do
something like that too, it didn’t matter what age I was. I wanted
to make something that I was proud of that would attract the
eyes of as many people as possible. I worked on my
photography skills, learned how to analyze/use social media to
my advantage, got better at lmmaking, and now I’m making
music with my twin brother. I’ve learned how to put on a persona
online and in public with my body language, much like what Amy
Cuddy talked about in her Ted Talk. A cool out t will really boost
your con dence from what me and my brother found, and in a
sense we really are “faking it until we become it”. I realized that
even though I might not feel like I should be famous, if you fake it
and act like a celebrity people will suddenly become interested. It
really does give you that imposter feeling, I don’t feel like I’m all
that much but it gives me more opportunities to work with other
people that know what they’re doing with their art.

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 Last summer I had my rst big “fame moment”. My dad’s side of
the family is made up of a bunch of photographers so we have
this huge collection of color slides at my house. I went through
them all and found that they’re absolutely stunning. Only a
handful of people ever saw them so I decided to post them to an
instagram account called Hotoi lm, and I advertised the account
on Tiktok. The Tiktoks blew up and over a couple months I
accumulated 86k followers on instagram. The amounts of
dopamine I was receiving each day was insane, and in the
moment I was very happy. I had been wanting this for a long
time, but after a couple months what I found was this emptiness.
What was I going to do now? Would I just keep milking this
project and try and blow it up as much as I could? I thought a lot
about that. Yes it was fun to have the project blow up and get
attention for it, but after a couple months it became a chore. I
found that my happiness revolved around how many interactions
a post got, and when something I put lots of time into making
opped, I felt super defeated. The elephant in my brain craved
that hit of dopamine again. Once I saw what this project was
doing to me I took a step back and quit for a while. I realized that
fame wasn’t what I thought it was, and that it really leaves people
feeling empty inside if they let it control them. I don’t think fame
is bad and I’m not going to avoid it now or anything, but I learned
the value of nding happiness in the little things, like watching a
sunset with someone or playing a game with a friend. That kind
of happiness, from love, will always be with me. I love this
sentence from the Berkeley article Darrin McMahon wrote, “To
cure this condition, we might focus less on our own personal
happiness and instead on the happiness of those around us, for
relentless focus on one’s own happiness has the potential to be
self-defeating.” I now have a new goal in life. I still have the
desire to make music and lms and be recognized for my work,
but it doesn’t have to be to the extent Billie Eilish is recognized. If
only my close friends were to see and hear the things I create, I
would be happy. In the end, only my own opinion and the
opinions of my friends are what’s important when it comes to the
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work I create. I want to give them content to consume just
because it’s fun to do. No one is remembered for long after they
die. We leave our life’s work and wealth to our descendants, it
will mean nothing to us once we die. Fame will give me nothing
worth while if I’m in it just for the recognition. But it has so many
opportunities for me to make more friends and create better art,
which is my reason for pursuing it now. Fame and money will
come and go, I won’t let it control me. I’ll be more willing to give
up my dream and pursue a more quiet life behind the scenes,
which will probably end up being the case for me. Regardless,
I’m excited for my future. I’ve found how to be content, and that
will help me be happy in any situation I nd myself in.
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