Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Handwritten (in mostly cursive!), with words marked through and a few misspelled ones included.  Signed, folded, stuffed in an envelope, licked (yes, a face was made at the yucky taste of glue), addressed, stamped and taken to the mail box. 

What am I?

An old-fashioned letter of course.  Not a tweet, status update, message or email, but a real ink and paper letter!  It is one of my favorite things to receive and one of my favorite things to send.  The excitement of opening the mailbox to find something good inside.  Not a bill or credit card offer or a request from a charity, but forty five cents worth of message.

I confess that I do love the convenience of email, especially for work-related tasks.  The capability to send a hundred people something at one time and organize their responses, etc. is both efficient and easy.  Instant communication is also really handy for keeping up with friends, old and new, sharing information with everyone at the same time and being able to connect with them whenever and where ever.  

But I LOVE letters. My great-grandfather sent a note to his wife, care of my Grandma Addie, general delivery in 1951.  She got it just fine, even though the envelope said nothing more than Addie Rhoney, Metter, GA.  

I love reading the banal little anecdotes that people share in letters, probably because they can't think of anything else to say:  "It's raining here today," or "Bobby Sue is thinking about cutting her hair short," or "Do you remember the old cotton warehouse?  They tore it down last week."  Simple, boring details that reveal the ebb and flow of daily life.

I love that you can fold a letter back up, put it away and pull it out to read again later. I love knowing that someone took the time to write one.  I love sitting down and sorting out my thoughts, putting pen to paper to write one.  I love to imagine the journey; from mailbox to truck to post office then plane, truck, mailbox.  A little piece of happiness wrapped up in words, carried across town or out of state or half way around the world.

The Happiness Project

"Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likeable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens." - Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project.

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not unhappy. Do I appreciate how lucky I am to be married to a good man, to have two healthy, intelligent children and to have family and friends who give of their love, time and friendship generously? Yes! Does it ever cross my mind that the pure chance of not being born in poverty in the third world means simply by having enough food to eat I am happier than the great majority of people on this earth? Frequently! Should I be grateful for the life I have? You better believe it! I am grateful. But could I do with a little more contentment... a bit more "in the moment" joy? Not only could I do with it, I crave it.

Much like Gretchen Rubin describes in her book, I find myself looking at my life and thinking, so this is it? Married, two kids, working, fighting off under eye wrinkles and gray hair and a gnawing sense of, THIS IS IT! Who I am, living the life I've got, waiting for everything to magically become perfect. If only the mortgage were paid off and the kids wouldn't smear paint or fingernail polish all over the table. If only those stupid unmatched socks would pair themselves up and march to the sock drawers. If only I could fit into my skinny jeans and the dog wouldn't chase the UPS man. If only I had more time and less to do.... wouldn't life be deliciously, deliriously, wondrously wonderful?

So how do I let go of the elusive perfect and find the happiness in the good?

By embarking on my own happiness project. Implementing small strategies and setting small mile markers to up the happy quotient in my life. After all, a happier me will mean happier people surrounding me.

This month's goals are to get more sleep (people who are well-rested have more energy to do the things and make the changes that will make them happy) and to wrap up at least one nagging task I've let go too long. Yes I am mimicking Gretchen's first month goals almost exactly... but I think this is a good place to start for me. I never sleep all night long. Waking up ten times is not unusual. When I do get enough sleep, I have more energy, get more done and feel more satisfied with my day. My upstairs space is almost finished. But it has been over a year since I did anything with that room! The blinds need to be hung, the paint splotches cleaned up and the furniture placed and arranged. I've found a thousand reasons (probably literally, a thousand) not to tackle these boring tasks... and the unfinishedness of it hangs over me (also quite literally) like a gloomy what-if. I think the satisfaction of completing this long overdue job will be worth the drudgery of actually tackling the tedium of paint scraping, window cleaning, furniture staining, etc.

With that said, I do realize that there is no magic secret to contentment. But I equally realize that exploring what makes people appreciate what they have, what they are actively doing to achieve contentment and gratefulness is an endeavor worth undertaking, if only for the journey and not the destination. Here's to happiness!

Drive

The weather is stunning right now. Bordering on too warm, but the heat is mitigated by the beauty of new leaves and the clean white of dogwood blossoms and pink, red, and white azaleas. Skies that look like they extend forever. Fields cleared and ready for planting. Everything is fresh.

New.

It makes me want to drive.

To obey that impulse to ignore the responsibilities of daily life... alarm clocks, laundry, dishes, meal times, schedules, phone, computer... to watch it, the eternal forward motion of life, grow smaller in the rear view mirror.

To tune it out with the blast of the ipod and the rush of wind over ears.

To let the sound of robins and the blue of the sky and the lazy float of clouds in front of the sun bleach life into a quiet shade of white and calm.

To be in a place where time is irrelevant and I can breathe and my energy is not pulled in a thousand different directions.

To just exist for a bit. To hear nothing but the pull of air in and the push out, the steady beat of my heart.

Not a possibility right now. Too many balls in the air that simply CANNOT come crashing down.

But... to borrow some of Sally Seltman's lyrics:

"Dreams, they come and go. This is one I've had forever I know. Been crossing my fingers and always hoping for it to come true... Got a dream that's become a friend and a reality!" Australia - 2014. We. are. there.

Date Night

Simple pleasures.

No kids underfoot who have to be told "stop that!" or "please put that away".

A bonus that the cleaning lady came Friday, so there was no "to do" list hanging over my head.

No laundry that needed folding, no vacuuming or mopping or anything else to distract from having take out, a rented movie, time to enjoy each other and relax.

It was the best time we've had in ages and it was virtually free.

This date night brought to you by Grandma Pat, Applebee's gift card and Netflix movie rentals.

The Cookie Lady

There is a little lady who stops by my office frequently and delivers a bag of Neiman Marcus cookies, a dozen or so, stuffed into a ziploc bag, labeled "For Melinda" or "For Melinda's family". Is there anything that could brighten a day more than getting cookies delivered... with your name on them, no less? She is elderly, and of late, her memory is failing. Sometimes the cookies are a little too crisp on bottom or a little too salty. But it makes my day nonetheless.