My Hapiness Project

After having a particularly stressful couple of days being annoyed at just about everything, I've decided to start my own Happiness Project as suggested and inspired by Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project. As I was ranting and raving about a stupid inconsequential thing like the dogs being filthy after coming in from their pen outside, I thought: "why am I so angry?" To tell you the truth, I really couldn't figure it out. Sure, the dogs required a bath, which took some time, but it wasn't as bad as you would have thought after hearing me cursing and screaming. After thinking about it for the rest of the night, I came to the conclusion that my main problem is bad time management.

There are certain things in life that I really want to do. In order of decreasing importance: First, I want to be able to spend time with my wife and each of my kids, paying attention to to them individually on a regular basis. Somewhat related to that first item is to spend time with all of my family at once doing fun and rewarding things, like going to museums, parks, and other interesting places, playing games, watching movies, etc. Second, I would like time to be able to express myself creatively (writing prose, songs, art, etc.). That's about it.

There are then the things that I have to do: Go to work. Maintain our house. Take care of medical issues. Take care of the dogs. And other fairly unpleasant (to me) things. That last one is what set me off yesterday. The dogs encroached on the time I had set aside for the first set of "like to do" things. In the end, I was still able to do the "like to do" stuff, but when I had to set aside more time to clean the dogs and then their pen, it seemed like I wouldn't be able to do that good stuff. On top of that, we went roller skating and then were going to go to a restaurant, however, we had to first go home to feed the dogs. So, instead of getting to the restaurant at 5:30 when it wouldn't have been crowded, we got there at 6:30 and had to wait for 35 minutes with 4 very restless kids. Again, inconvenient, but not the end of the world and not a reason to be too annoyed.

If I had planned my time better, or thought about things a bit more before exploding, things would have been much more pleasant for me and everyone else.

These events combined with my frequent reading of The Happiness Project has led me to start my own Happiness Project. The first thing is to list my (insert number here) commandments. Here is a first shot at it (I'll discuss the specifics at a later time):

1. One thing at a time
2. Pay attention
3. Let it go
4. Go with the flow
5. Write every day
6. Forgive
7. Remember the golden rule

I'm bound to edit the list and add more, but for now, this is it.