Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

Without a doubt:

1. My puppy. We moved out of a studio apartment with my ex in a town I didn’t know, back to my city and into a house of our own two weeks before everything shut down. In the last year we’ve bonded incredibly, and weathered the worst of the last year together in a way that would have been incredibly difficult without her. We wake up every day to snuggles and a special day’s greeting, and wind down every night squished up on the couch. I carry her to bed most nights, not because she needs carrying but because it feels so sweet to end the night that way.

2. I quit a job that was burning me out and spent 5 months building the start of a living art project which reinvigorated my creative mind and my love of the tech craft. It’s just started but I have a zillion things I plan to do with it, and it’s the first ambitious project I’ve been able to follow through on in years.

Where’d you go?

Currently in Egypt (spending a few months here can alter your perspective), next up ... we'll see! My next permanent base is going to be Russia.

Lexapro & Adderall.

Which enabled me to rediscover my desire to innovate and learn.

Staying away from the startup hustle and city life.

I have been constantly disturbed by the chase in the startup system. Building up something out of own passion is one thing, but trying to act like the investor-led founders has been driving me crazy for years.

I live a village life now, do much less software work. Have dialed down my ambitions and I am actually very happy. I do feel that my skills, acquired over 15 years, are less used, but that regret does not last long when I take a trip around the neighboring hills (I live in a Himalayan territory).