Happy Harvest Blog
Early observations of Nova Scotia.
We’ve been soaking up our new province as we drive around (so far our opinions of the culture are mostly based on the view from the road). I’m in love with it. Everyone has gardens. Everyone has clotheslines. Nova Scotia’s waste management system is the envy of the world.
It's all about the list
My list has two sections: eight things I intend to do daily, and eleven things that I want to do 1-3x per week. When I execute one, I get to stick one of my fancy glitter stars over the hopeful little grey placeholder. The satisfaction of doing this is all out of proportion.
One week in:
This little journal reminds me now of the 92 year old woman who dropped a pile of day planners like this on my desk and blithely told me she’d kept a journal every day for her whole life. “Well, not when I was very small”. Each little inch was filled with her tiny handwriting about coffee dates, projects, feelings, moods, successes- everything. An inch can be enough to summarize the main events of a day.
Never was a list so serious
In a spectacular example of the wrong approach, I started the day with cookies, didn’t drink water, and spent nearly a day creating the list of my model Happiness plan. The irony was not lost on me, as I flouted early entries ON the list, like hydrate; wrestled with text in a handwriting font when I could have written it by hand faster; and spent energy on an accessory, at best- creating a list instead of taking actions that were on the list.
Rules, Adages, or Guidelines for Happiness
If a system doesn’t function, change the system. My husband gives me fantastic feedback on whether a system works (like, where things belong). If it works, he puts things back where they “go”, because that’s the easiest, obvious place to put them. If the system doesn’t work, he finds someplace else to drop them that displeases me, and I know my so-clever system isn’t functional and needs to be adapted.
My Happiness Project
Do something every day, and it becomes who you are. Good or bad. Read, get angry, and write daily, and eventually you are a well-read angry writer......Most motivating is imagining the freedom of being able to have an idea and begin it.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
