An (Annotated) Guide to Finding Happiness

Step 1: Spend time doing something you enjoy 

I wouldn’t have thought it would be so difficult for me to find something that I enjoy. For some people, this is a straightforward task: they find this pleasure in baking or gardening; painting or drawing; music or books. Since first reading this guide, I have waded through an ocean of half-finished cross stitches and unsolved sudokus to find the thing I truly enjoy. My guilty pleasure.

The key word there being guilty.

Step 2: Do some exercise

This newfound hobby of mine requires surprisingly more strength than I had expected, so this second step also seemed like a worthwhile piece of advice to take to heart. I tend to stay clear of gyms and sports halls – the mere thought of those filthy petri dishes of sweat, tears and other bodily fluids makes my skin crawl and my stomach churn – and stick to the garden or, at a stretch, the country park. And when the weather is too miserable to subject myself to, an online workout session in my kitchen does the job.

As with anything, I’ve found some forms of exercise to be more beneficial than others. For my personal pastime, a strong core is central (pun intended), so I have also subscribed to a channel for Yoga classes on YouTube. I made sure that it was not one that talks about “aligning your Chakras” or “releasing your inner goddess” because, quite frankly, I just want an exercise class. I am not looking to re-evaluate my spiritual outlook on the world in the process.

Step 3: Rid yourself of negative influences

When the author of this guide wrote this step, they probably didn’t intend for me to interpret it the way I did. But one cannot deny that ridding not just myself but the whole world of these influences is going to produce the most happiness. Sure, there are some people who are going to miss the thieving/abusive/homeless addicts, but there will be far more people who will benefit from their absence.

That’s just common sense.

Step 4: Reduce your stress levels

Having found my passion, built up the physical strength to sustain it, and the motivation to continue pursuing it, it was time for me to turn to this fourth piece of advice. Which was relatively easy to achieve with a bit of experimentation.

I’ve moved from the commonly known ways to achieve my goals, the kind you see in films and on television, to ones which are a little more creative and a tad less strenuous. It's really helped with the stress.

And I never thought I would say this, but I am actually grateful that I took Biology A-Level because – although I hated it at the time – I have finally been able to put some of those tid-bits of knowledge to practical use.

Step 5: Boost your self-esteem

More often than not, low self-esteem stems from believing that what others say about you - or would say about you - is true. If the world were to learn of my new pleasure, not everyone would approve of it. I can just imagine the labels they’d give me:

Psycho.

Criminal.

Murderer.

But I am not going to let that bring me down. They simply do not appreciate the vigilante justice I am implementing in our broken society. They don’t understand that I am not the villain here, I am cleaning our streets of them.

So label me a murderer if you want to.

I prefer the term superhero.

And like a superhero’s alter ego, I have remained anonymous thus far. I can’t help but smile when I remind myself that I’ve managed to get away with it every single time. Regardless of what your standpoint is on the issue, you have to be impressed by that at the very least.

Step 6: Remember your roots

I didn’t intend to become a mass murderer.

That had never been part of my plan. I hadn’t had a childhood full of killing cats or playing with roadkill, hanging out in graveyards or being abused by my parents. It was as normal as any childhood could be. The homicidal thoughts didn't start until last year when I found myself in a relationship with a controlling and emotionally abusive alcoholic. It got to the point I couldn’t take it anymore.

Fortunately for me, he was diabetic.

I waited, one night, until he was snoring on the sofa – he’d fallen asleep in front of the football yet again – then gave him an insulin injection. And another. Then I went to bed, and pretended to be surprised when I couldn’t wake him in the morning. I made myself a coffee, called 999, then put on a theatre performance of fake tears for the paramedics. He was pronounced dead on the scene. The cause was ruled "severe hypoglycaemia caused by an accidental insulin overdose".

Although I had to continue playing the part of the grieving lover, my insides were buzzing with adrenaline. I had just gotten away with murder! And it wasn’t long before other thoughts started crossing my mind: for there are many others like him in this world, and not all of their victims will have the guts to do what I did.

I decided to make it my mission to help them out.

Step 7: Talk and share with others.

Despite having full belief in my newfound pastime, I think I’m going to pass on step seven. I’ll keep it just between me and this journal instead.

I don’t think it will help me to achieve happiness if one of my so-called friends decides to turn me over to the cops. I know that my friends and family have noticed that I’ve become more distant, more secretive, and, at times, no doubt they find me suspicious.

But they think I’m still grieving.

None of them suspect I am capable of this.

Then again, neither did I before I started.

Step 8: Limit your screen time

I would have said that following the steps in this guide had done wonders for my happiness, if it weren’t for my failure to succeed in this one area: step eight.

See, whenever a notification pops up from ITV News Central, all I can think is ‘Oh shit’. At which point, I remind myself of this step, and proceed to fail at it once again. The temptation to click on the headline too great, the anxiety of what it contains too overwhelming, for me to ignore the notification at the top of my screen.

I guess that makes step nine even more important.

Step 9: Build resilience

I clenched my teeth together whilst scrolling through the most recent article, deeply relieved when I made it to the end without seeing anything that could implicate me in any way, shape or form. For this latest victim, they are not looking for me in connection with his disappearance. I’m not sure why I always get so anxious that they will: he wasn’t someone I knew personally, and there’s no electronic trail of communication between us, he was just someone the world would be better off without. He did not go missing suspiciously close to my neighbourhood, nor any place of personal significance to me. No one saw us together, nor were there any CCTV cameras in the vicinity. I left no forensic evidence that could be tied back to me (hair, bodily fluids, fingerprints, etc.), and my DNA is not in their database in the first place. I made sure every t was crossed and every i was dotted. Yet I still worry I missed one.

It's been a steep learning curve to discover the best methods of murdering someone and then disposing of the body without arousing suspicions. The police found the bodies of some of my earliest kills, or at least parts of them. The barrel of acid still had half a skeleton inside when some teenagers stumbled across it, and the pigs didn’t manage to consume a whole body before the farmer found him. But I have made it through all of these challenges, learnt from my mistakes, and now my skillset is stronger than ever – even if I do say so myself

Step 10: Continue to follow these steps

The rush of adrenaline, the vigilante justice, the development of my skills, have all come from the combination of reading this guide and the accidental discovery of the thrill that getting away with murder provides. The anxiety continues to eat away at me, taking another bite each time another headline pops up on my phone, but I will continue to work on improving this - maybe I should start by turning the ITV News notifications off. And I will not stop pursuing my new hobby.

After all, I’m killing it.