One of the things that sparked yesterday’s long walk was a book I read over the weekend, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. This book comes from the era of the “I did this thing for a year and here are my experiences with it” books, though it seems like she was unaware of the trend when she was doing it, and her blog grew out of the project rather than it being one of those blogs picked up to be a book. She read a bunch of books and research about different theories about what made people happy and spent a year trying all these things to see if it really made a difference in her life.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve been unhappy, but I have had some dissatisfaction lately and thought it might be a good idea to reevaluate things. I’ve realized that there are a lot of things I enjoy doing but that I don’t give myself time to do. And thus the walk yesterday. There’s a wonderful park on the edge of my neighborhood where I can walk in the woods alongside a river bank, and I seldom seem to make it over there, even though I often think about doing it.

I don’t think I got any earthshattering ideas out of this book. Much of what she was doing involved her relationships with her husband and children, and I don’t have those. With me, it’s more about decluttering and organizing my life the way I’m trying to do to my house so I can make time for doing things I enjoy. And then when I make that time, I need to actually do those things.

That means more long walks on nice days, more time with music, time to make things.

But another big part of it is creating the conditions in which it’s easier to be happy and at peace, which means taking care of my health and getting my environment in order.

So I have all kinds of plans worked out, but don’t worry, I’m not planning to write a book about this because so many people have already done so.