Tag Archives: happiness

Ironic Happiness

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It’s hit me a few times in the last couple of weeks: For the first time since I can remember – possibly ever – I’m actually, truly, fully, HAPPY. I mean the kind of happy where you fall asleep with a smile on your face and wake up ready to dive into the next day with nothing but excitement and determination.

Which is totally nuts, when you think about it. Right now I should be totally stressed out and panicky. I don’t have a “real job.” I don’t have any sort of income. I’m living on a very specific budget. Despite that, between living expenses and expenses for Accompl.sh, I’m still pretty quickly emptying out my savings account.

When I left Etsy I said I was giving myself until March to get my act together. It’s March and, well, my act still isn’t together, but for the first time everything seems like it’s starting to come together. My development skills are the best they’ve ever been, I have a super clear picture of where I want to take Accompl.sh in the future, my relationships with friends and family have never been stronger, and my health is in a much better place and still improving.

I find myself working from 10 or 11AM straight through until 3 or 5AM and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world.

Apparently money can’t buy happiness. But having enough money to sustain being able to do what I love for the last 5 months has made me so incredibly happy and fulfilled. I don’t have a yacht or a penthouse or even a new iPad, but I wouldn’t trade these last 5 months for ANYTHING and I’m going to do everything possible to make sure that I can buy this kind of happiness for the rest of my life.

Internet Reset

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our dock

Over 4th of July weekend, my friend Jimelle and I took off on a bit of an adventure. Or maybe it was more of anti-adventure. We hopped in her car and drove 10 hours up to the tippy top of Maine on a mission: to detox our internet/phone addictions. A real vacation.

We had 3 criteria for our vacation and set 2 rules for once we got there:

  • It had to be a cabin
  • It had to be on a lake
  • It had to be in Maine (we still don’t know how we ended up making Maine a requirement, but it worked out!)
  • No computers, phones, or any electronic devices that would connect us to the outside world
  • Hide any forms of time-keeping (clocks, watches, iPad clocks, etc)

For anyone who knows me, the idea of going for any period of time without my phone within arm’s reach and without any sort of internet connection is basically laughable. But I was determined. I knew I needed a bit of a detox. And detox I did.
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The Importance of Having Projects

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I’m a projects person. I love projects. I love having something to play around with when my regular responsibilities get to be old hat. I love the challenge of having something else to think about besides school work or real work – something that stretches my mind a bit and keeps me from losing touch with reality.

I’ve been struggling with not having a project for the last few months. When I got back from Europe and found myself with a few weeks with nothing to do but enjoy summer vacation I was itching to DO something, to create something, but I didn’t know what. Instead I played around with my blogs. I decided to leave forever-digital behind and move here. And that kept me occupied for a while, but it wasn’t the project I was looking for.

It was incredibly frustrating. I hadn’t started work yet, I was in the process of moving and starting my post-college life, but at the same time I felt almost directionless. My mind was idling.

When I started work a lot of these frustrations were set aside as I learned the ropes of the corporate world and had some work projects to keep me occupied for a while, but now that I’m more settled in and I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve struck a decent work/life balance, I’m ready to get back into my personal projects. Now that I know how much time I need for work and how much time I need for a social life and all that, I’m ready to tackle MY projects again.

Having all of this time to really think about what I want to do has been incredibly helpful and for the first time ever my need to create something has matched up with having the time to do it. I’ve had this idea mulling around in my head for a few months and I’ve finally gotten it down on paper and it’s almost ready for the next step: action.

I’m really excited about it and when it gets a bit more fleshed out I’ll try to share some of it, but for now I’m just really thankful to have a problem that I find personally interesting to work on for the first time since I finished school in May. Here’s hoping it all works out!

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