Happiness Project

I read a great book recently called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  The whole premise is to conscientiously focus on the things that make you happier.  Our lives are full of lots of things we "should" do, and often we put aside our own happiness.  Instead, we need to focus on those things that do make us happy.  Her example is to focus on one thing for a whole month and then switch to to another focus for the next month, and so on.  The book details her year-long journey of happiness.

I've been trying to think of personal things and/or activities that make me happy:

* Blogging.  I'm not sure why, but I've immensely enjoyed blogging over the past 4-5 years. I suppose I like the writing freedom and being able to have my corner of the cyberworld that is just mine without any rules, no one is paying me to write anything specific, and it's both a gratifying and cathartic activity for me.  I do make time for it as well. That has been a definite constant in my life.  However, if I actually devoted the time I spend blogging toward writing novels, I'd probably have a whole shelf of novels by now.  But that's beside the point, right?

* Volunteering.  This has definitely been slacking since I had a child.  I need to get back into this because I did really enjoy it. When Julia's a little older, I would hope that she volunteers with me.

* Chores.  There have been some chores that I've been wanting to do.  Yes, I want to do some chores.  You know the quadrants of importance/urgency where things can be urgent/not important, not urgent/important, urgent/important and not urgent/not important?  I have some tasks that I want to do that are not urgent/not important.  It's always easy to set them aside because so many other things trump them.  For instance, I want to paint the garage.  Why, you ask?  The garage kinda smells, it's a really depressing shade of gray, the walls are gross.  I just want a clean slate in there with the dinginess gone.  I also want to clean the floor in there for the same reasons as I want to paint the walls.  It's one of those tasks that certainly isn't urgent or important, but it nags at me at least twice a day, and I would love to pull into a pretty garage.  So I'm making that a priority in the coming month or so even though it's kind of lame in the grand scheme of things.

* Exercise.  I enjoy getting out in nature and getting the heart pumping.  I hope as the weather gets better (it's back to the 30s and 40s), I can exercise outside more vs. inside.

* Photography.  I have a fancy camera, and I still don't know how to use the dang thing.  I mean, I understand aperture and all that in theory, but if it's just me and the camera and I'm forced to use manual mode, well....it wouldn't be a pretty sight. One of the automatic modes usually sees me through well enough, and the photo editing program saves me.  I would like to hone my photographic instincts so that I could intuitively know how to capture pictures in manual mode.  One of those not urgent/not important things that would make me happier.

* Reading.  I love to read all sorts of things, and I think I'm pretty good about this.  And remember the Dewey project - that was a focused project that I enjoyed doing most of the time (toward the end it did get tedious).

I think cultivating deeper social bonds with others would likely make me happier.  I'm just so darn antisocial!  It's a hard hurdle to overcome, but I know it's important for my long-term happiness.  The interests and happiness-activities I like to pursue are, for the most part, solitary activities. I need to seek out some activities or clubs I can join.  Can I make that my 2012 resolution?  That and increase my turn signal usage.  (I'm probably at a 75% turn signal usage rate, and I'd like that to be more like 95%.) 

Good thing 2012 is eight months away.  That gives me lots of time to formulate a strategy to cultivate those social bonds, which seems like a very esoteric concept to my literal mind.