Friday, January 16, 2015

Happiness in a Jar 2015

So as I blogged a year ago, I was going to keep track of the things in daily life that made me happy.  I will be honest, I failed to do this for the entire year.  I'm not sure what happened, but somewhere in the middle of the summer I just stopped putting things in every day.  I never even got around to decorating it like I wanted to.
Still looks like this...

I went through what was in there the other night, reading some of them out loud for my husband's enjoyment.  There were a few random entries for July and August, but for the most part June was the last month I was placing slips of paper into it.

It was amusing.  Not sure if my husband would agree with that.  I suspect I may have been annoying him a little bit since he was playing GTA V, but he never told me to stop so I didn't.  I could also be wrong as he can be a bit hard to read during this game.

Anyway, I marked down how many times certain things were repeated.  Because, well, I thought it would interesting to see what won out.  And it would help make this post even more interesting.  It turns out, it was very revealing about myself.

I knew I had put in several times about receiving affection from my husband,  What can I say?  I like his touch and it makes me happy and content!  BUT - oddly enough, it ranked third...and only beat our reading and writing by about 4.  Of course, I mainly wrote down physical affection, hugs, kisses and the like.  If I add in other kinds of affection, like him helping with chores, then that would put it in the lead.  Like the time he brought me junk food and wine because he knew I wasn't feeling good (read: depressed).

Which leads into the second place winner in this little happy contest.  Food.  I've known for a long time that I "feed my emotions", but seeing the numbers was a little unsettling.  Granted, some of those times were commenting about how we had been treated out somewhere, usually Chinese.  But still, there was one day I wrote down "Peanut Butter Cups".  I think Oreos got a mention too.  I am already watching what I eat this year, trying to get my blood sugar stabilized again and my weight down.  I am going to be having surgery on my foot soon and the doctor already told me he is expecting me to actively be losing weight at the time of the surgery.  I'm also going to try to focus on less food related happiness.  Given how tight our finances are at the moment (the reason for the GoFundMe link in the side of the blog), such treats are going to be few and far between for a while anyway.

Sadly, what came out on top, was how many time I commented on not having to work.  There were quite a few 'short days', even if it was 8.5 hours instead of 9.  Several days when we just didn't work, either Saturday or when they "darkened" us on a Monday.  It emphasized to me just how unhappy I am in my present job.  Not a surprise, but it was enough to make me think about it.  I know I'd like to go back to school for something. but again, given our finances, now isn't the best time.  Maybe in the fall once Mr. Janney and I have healed up from our torn tendons and are back to working fulltime.

Hopefully, you'll be seeing more of me this year.  One of my goals this year is to be more consistent with my blogging and social media.  I'm not off to a great start, but there is a lot of year left still.  We might not all be off to a great start, but there is plenty of time for that to change. (keeping fingers crossed).  I have been on Twitter more this year, not tweeting anything too inspirational I'm afraid, but nothing negative either.  Just getting into the habit of looking and saying something.  I've also been working on photo's to share.

And when it comes to the Happiness Jar, I'm off to another good start.  I've moved it to a more visible spot, got two small pads of paper to write on and plenty of pens.  I wonder what I'll learn about myself this year?


Did you do a happy jar last year?  Did you do better than I and stick with it?  I'd love to hear about it!

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