I was a vegetarian from around the time I was 13 to around the time I was 23. That’s a whole decade where I did not eat meat. It’s kind of funny to think back at those days – especially when the happiest day of my week is the day that I get to visit Croxley’s for their $.10 wing nights. Still – it was a definitive part of my history. So, why did I change? The answer: MATH.

Picture your life like a giant algebra puzzle (I know, I know – who remembers algebra?). Whatever the equation is – the goal is to have that equation equal “happiness.” Everyone’s equation is different, but the goal is the same. So, after some initial post-collegiate adventures, I moved to Syracuse. Syracuse, NY – my home town. Which, at the time, felt like I accomplished nothing in the five years since I graduated high school. No diploma, no life experience, no tales from the other side could convince me otherwise – I was a failure (I’d link to those introspective blog posts, but I’ll save that for my memoirs).

That’s the thing about home towns – especially during the times of early adult hood. I didn’t know that I was simply part of a new phenomena, I just knew that things were not working out the way I wanted them to. So I started to think about what I wasn’t happy about. The first things that popped into my head were “Location” and “Work.” These were two big variables that I was decidedly unhappy with. I wasn’t doing work that was fitting for what I wanted to do in my career. And I was unhappy living back in my home town, a place that felt extremely tiny despite the 700k people living in the metro area.

The problem with big variables is that they aren’t exactly easy to change. Moving and employment are intrinsically tied together – so unless you have the savings to pay for the move and the possible months of unemployment, moving isn’t truly an option (I’ll discover a few years later that it’s also not as hard as I imagined it to be, but that’s another story for another time). So, if I can’t move and the local economy making it hard to find worth employment – what should I do?

Let’s go back to that algebra problem of life? We’ve established that there are big variables out there (work, employment) but what about the little variables? Each day we’re given a choice to do certain things. They can be as simple as the route we take to work or the places we frequent. Whatever they are – they impact the rest of your life as much as those big variables do. Make enough change to the little variables and there might be more impact on your life than the big ones could provide. Changing something – anything – is an important step toward happiness.

So – I looked at my life and started to think about the things that I never thought about. I lived a pretty simple life. I was living with some friends of the family, I was paying myself out of debt and I had very few friends. But diving deeper, I decided to look at some things that I never thought about. The first thing: what I ate. Despite being a vegetarian, I wasn’t the most healthy eater. And, the label vegetarian, never really fit with me. There was no Upton Sinclair/anti-meat industry moment. There was no “Animals are all living beings” empathy. There was just the simple fact that I did not eat meat. No rhyme. No reason. And that wasn’t good enough.

I started eating meat slowly, but it quickly paid dividends. When word got around that I was no longer a vegetarian, I was invited out to guys nights at Hooters. Sure, that’s not a recipe for changing your life for good – but it expanded my social circle. I started to enjoy my home town in a new way – forgetting the pangs of adolescents and discovering and making new memories. I started to make some good friends who, while not a part of my life anymore, served a role and introduced me to some great people I am still close with today. I evolved and my life became happier. A small, little choice changed my life. It effected the equation and I was closer to the happiness we all crave.

It took years for me to be happy but I never forgot that lesson – if you’re unhappy, change something. It’s powerful when you realize how easy it is. At 29 years old (almost 30 as my girlfriend likes to remind me), I am happier than I have ever been. But I’m not completely there yet. There’s a reexamination of what I want in my life. Being in love added a new variable that I never before realized was part of the equation and I realize that it’s actually the best part of the equation. The other variables have become smaller. It’s the smaller variables that I need to shift because I am so close to complete happiness. So close to the life that I want that I no longer am obsessed with it. Just a few tweaks here and there and it will be complete. And I know that, if I ever get too far from the answer, I can always just do the one thing that has produced results: Change Something.