I wrote "What Makes Me Happy", for the same reason I wrote "We're Enough" from my 2017 Album. (See below)

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I feel young people get a lot of negative information, calamitous information about the future they are facing and the state of the world. While this information is not wrong, it doesn't tell the whole story. The world has always held challenges, dangers. We feel that the danger at this moment is the most pressing, because it's our danger, effecting our lives right now. 

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I remember my experience as a young person living in Adealide in 1982 in the "worst post war recession".

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In 1982, I was 20 years old, living under the stairwell, of Gordon Choon's Peanuts, Confectionary and Fireworks factory in Adelaide's Rundle St. Youth Unemployment in South Australia was %28 by the end of 1983 (ABS) and things were grim. I was invited to participate in a youth arts and advisory group at the Adelaide Festival Centre. I was struggling with depression and agrophobia. Participating was hell. Being in the room was unbearably difficult.

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There was a decision to respond to the youth employment crisis by erecting funeral crosses in a park to commemorate each young person currently unemployed. I was devestated that the approach was so bleak and so inefectual as to actually create a difference in young people's lives at that moment. I felt deep despair.

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Over the following years life improved. As it can. When I think back to that time, the most difficult aspect was the lack of any positive messages about my possible future. While it is the media's job to report on events, the callousness of the future that was shown to me was very difficult to rise above.

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Similarly, in the current situation there is endless information about youth unemployment and youth mental health, but little coverage of how people overcome these chalenges. And mostly people do overcome difficult starts. 

 

The world is huge. But often our world we live in, the one we have any control of, is quite small. The weight of the whole story can be too much, but the small things we can do are reachable. Like deciding to cook good food, have a dance, call a friend, even when we feel terrible. Those small acts can change our mental state as well as give to people around us.

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So... Dance around the kitchen. Act "As if" As if you are a person who can dance, as if you are a person worth preparing a meal for, As is you're brave enough to make a phone call.

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We're Gonna make it!!