I deserve to be happy.

One small word does most of the postponing: *when*. When the accounts are done. When the weight comes off. When work settles down. Happiness gets filed behind a condition, and conditions renew themselves indefinitely.

Nobody is holding the permission slip. There's no committee that reviewed your year and found you not yet eligible.

Fear does a decent impression of that committee, though. It suggests ease is careless — that if you relax, you'll miss the thing coming.

Take an hour of it today without having earned anything in particular. That isn't indulgence. It's declining to postpone your own life.