I think on the happiness front you should consider seeing a therapist, or a psychiatrist (not psychologist) to determine if it could be related to anything going on in your head. Getting your thyroid checked, or checking your serotonin levels could let you know if it's you, your brain, or your life (or at least give you a clue). Just something to think about.
I can also sympathize with the sort of break between how you really feel and how people think you feel. I've always been able to hide my actual feelings towards work when I'm there, and it's lead a lot of people to believe that I'm enjoying myself when I actually hate or don't give a crap about what I'm doing.
All I can say is that in all these cases, I may have initially cared about what I was doing, but the environment or people I worked with destroyed positive feelings and left a type of apathy or hatred behind. This has been true for school subjects as well (Spanish, Psychology, World Religions, etc). Each subject interested me, and I may even still like two of them, but horrible teachers/professors or program overwhelmed that interest. This makes me feel less like your complaint is unreasonable or strange. You may just not have found the right environment, even if you've found the right interests.
Also, your resolutions all sound reasonable, but it'll probably help both you and Steve a lot to also resolve to make some very specific goals (haha, resolve to resolve!). I've learned with losing weight and money that the importance is in the details. Like for us, rather than just a goal of "eat out less" it was "spend less than $40 a week on eating out" and at another time it was "limit one meal out a week." Once we knew what we were doing we could plan accordingly (like, do we go out to Chipotle 2-3 times that week, or do we go out for Siam Thai Village once for the $40 limit). Of course, this is just a suggestion of what worked for us--I'm sure you'll find out what works best for you two.
no subject
I can also sympathize with the sort of break between how you really feel and how people think you feel. I've always been able to hide my actual feelings towards work when I'm there, and it's lead a lot of people to believe that I'm enjoying myself when I actually hate or don't give a crap about what I'm doing.
All I can say is that in all these cases, I may have initially cared about what I was doing, but the environment or people I worked with destroyed positive feelings and left a type of apathy or hatred behind. This has been true for school subjects as well (Spanish, Psychology, World Religions, etc). Each subject interested me, and I may even still like two of them, but horrible teachers/professors or program overwhelmed that interest. This makes me feel less like your complaint is unreasonable or strange. You may just not have found the right environment, even if you've found the right interests.
Also, your resolutions all sound reasonable, but it'll probably help both you and Steve a lot to also resolve to make some very specific goals (haha, resolve to resolve!). I've learned with losing weight and money that the importance is in the details. Like for us, rather than just a goal of "eat out less" it was "spend less than $40 a week on eating out" and at another time it was "limit one meal out a week." Once we knew what we were doing we could plan accordingly (like, do we go out to Chipotle 2-3 times that week, or do we go out for Siam Thai Village once for the $40 limit). Of course, this is just a suggestion of what worked for us--I'm sure you'll find out what works best for you two.