on happiness

After fatefully stumbling upon an invite for a book talk by Gretchen Rubin, author of "The Happiness Project," I've been racing through the book, finding little excuse to put it down (other than anticipation of the deep sorrow I will feel when I realized I already read the entire thing and should allow for at least a decent wait time before I read it again).

In it, she chronicles a year-long expedition, very scientific and lawyer-ly in nature (in her pre-writer life, she clerked for a Supreme Court Justice) to change little things in her life to become more happy. Her mode of operation is simple: first, making resolutions and second, keeping them. Too good to be true...I know.

However, this got me thinking about the idea of resolutions, which has always been of interest to me. In middle school, in a flurry of unanticipated ambition, I wrote a long list of life resolutions that I felt were monumental at the time:

1) learn a foreign language.
2) learn to never get bothered, ever.
3) get a boyfriend.
4) learn to wax my arms and legs.
5) have children and grandchildren

and the list went on and on. (interesting how 'getting a boyfriend' and 'learning to wax' are on par.). Although I didn't see these as resolutions, I'd pull out my list from time to time and see how I stacked up against those things I wanted to be or do. So far, I've crossed off quite a few things (including #1, #3 and #4) - the other two I'm still working on ;)

In the meantime, I've come up with a new set of resolutions starting with:

1) trust God
2) sleep earlier
3) exercise more
4) act silly
5) dance like crazy
6) be Priti

So far, I'm feeling happier :) More resolutions to come...