A list of happymaking stuff

A bowl of foraged botanical bits n bobs

I'm quite the happy camper lately, as I've mentioned here recently. Actually, it's more accurate to say I'm an even happier camper, since I was fairly happy before (apart from that brief period I was off my meds). 

I've mentioned some of the reasons for this here and there, but here's a comprehensive list of reasons just because I like lists:

• I'm working four days a week instead of five. Less 
• I'm getting up earlier, which makes me happier because I like being up that early even if I don't love getting up that early (it makes sense to me...); I like seeing the sunrise from my bedroom window; I like not rushing in the mornings to get to work and having time to potter around a bit; I like getting to work on time (or even early); and I like having the time to walk to work again.
• I'm walking to work every day and home again most days. Walking along the river to work (and not having to deal with nuisance people on the tram) is a pleasant way to start the day. I get 40 minutes of exercise under my belt before 9.00am and a little dose of nature (as close to nature as you can get when you live a few kilometres from the CBD anyway).  
• I broke my almost-compulsive shopping habit (I have only about two months left of my year 12-month shopping ban and a new challenge in the pipeline). Overcoming that constant yearning to acquire more and more shoes and clothes has made a huge impact on my life satisfaction. It's hard to feel content when you are always wanting. 
• I've been in a super creative phase, fuelled mostly by my Instagram feed, which is full of flowers, nature and flatlays. Foraging for the bits and pieces to use in my flatlays is fun. 
• I've stopped complaining on social media and am actively being more positive (eg posting complimentary comments on Instagram). Not complaining boosted my happiness, but spreading positivity about the net wherever I go turbo-charged it.  
• I spend a fair bit of time on social media, but I actively manage my feeds to get what I want from them - entertainment (obviously), and news and information on topics that are important to me, but also connection with like-minded people, inspiration and positive vibes. For example, I follow many women who are feminists and body positivity advocates and their posts have had an impact not only on how I think about my own body, but about other women's bodies too. I'm less judgemental about them and less judgemental about myself (not that I hated my body before, but every bit of extra kindness helps). 
• I've been practising being less judgemental in general and trying not to let insignificant things get to me (I am normally irritated by many, many, MANY insignificant things). I do this by second-guessing myself - when I notice judgemental or irritable thoughts creeping in, I counteract it with another thought - e.g. "How can these idiots I work with not know how to stack a dishwasher?!" is replaced with, "Well, at least they're putting their dishes in the dishwasher instead of leaving them on the sink for someone else to deal with." And then I let it go. Most of the time. 
• I've been seeing a dietician who specialises in intuitive eating to help repair my unhealthy relationship with food. I have a history of disordered eating (but not a diagnosed eating disorder), which hasn't been helped by a long list of food intolerances that means I just can't eat whatever I want. I'm good at restriction...until I'm not and then I eat everything in sight. I lose weight and feel OK (physically, I mean)...then I put it all back on and feel rotten. Rinse and repeat. I decided I needed to finally get this feast/famine cycle sorted out for the sake of my health (physical and mental). I've seen the dietician three times and I feel like I've made good progress. 
• I've stopped eating gluten, which means I don't feel utterly exhausted and wracked with pain. Fatigue and pain really drag you down.
• The procedure I had in December has dramatically reduced the number of migraines I get (and also potentially prevented a brain haemorrhage/stroke. Not dying or being permanently incapacitated is very good for your mental state!). 

Six months down, foreign words, 10 days to go

In my street

I reached the six-month mark of my shopping ban last week, but I didn't realise it until yesterday. I guess that's a sign that not shopping for shoes and clothes is my new normal (and also a further sign that this year has whizzed by at warp speed). I think I mentioned previously that I've decided to extend my shopping ban for a year, so I'm just past the half-way point now.

I like this list of German words we need in English. I've heard (and blogged about) some before (backpfeifengesicht, zugzwang, drachenfutter, kummerspeck), but treppenwitz  - literally 'staircase joke', meaning a witty comeback thought of too late - caught my eye because I know of the French word for this - esprit d'escalier (staircase wit). A lecturer at uni used this expression, and for some reason it has stuck with me all these years. (It's more than 20 years since I finished uni. HOW CAN THAT BE?!)

Buzzfeed apparently has a thing for mining the gems of other languages. It has published a collection of Japanese,  Scottish, Italian and Nordic words (and probably others) it thinks English should steal. I love these lists. 

I also like this list of made up (but etymologically meaningful) words from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which describe emotions that English doesn't already have words for. I particularly relate to 'enouement', the bittersweetness of arriving in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self. Sometimes I feel this way when I look back on my childhood, when my parents were still together and my dad was still alive. 

I have 10 working days until I'm on holidays. 

NaBloPoMo: day 18

First go...gotta love that

Whoopsie, I've missed a few days. I didn't get home from the hospital on Tuesday after my test until about 9.00 pm and then I was out of action Wednesday as well. So I got two days off work and two sleep ins. I had a lot of reading time and I finished The Good People. I enjoyed it...but I think it was the writing that appealed more than the story. It held my attention, but I wasn't gripped.  

Next up I'm reading Clementine Ford's Fight Like a Girl. I've banned myself from buying more books until I've finished the unread books on my bedside table - maybe about 15 of them - because I got worried I was buying books just because I can't buy shoes.  

Have I mentioned I'm extending my ban on shopping for clothes, shoes and accessories to a full year? I'm 5.5 months in now and it's going remarkably well. It would be great to be able to say I went a whole year without buying that stuff. By the time I get to the end of my initial challenge (on 31 December) I'll be more than half way through the extended challenge. 

NaBloPoMo: day 2

Albert Park verandah seat

I'm debt freeeeee! I paid off my credit card today. Hurrah. I paid off the bulk of it with my tax return last month and the last couple of hundred today. It wasn't a massive debt, but it was more than I was comfortable with, so I'm very pleased it's history. Now I can focus on saving money for an overseas holiday next year. Paying off debt is a great feeling, but watching your savings grow is even better. 

Yesterday was the five-month mark of my shopping ban. It's going so well that I've almost made up my mind to extend it beyond the end of the year and stretch it out to a whole year of no new shoes and clothes. That will mean it ends on 31 May. 

When I was walking through the park on my way home tonight the sun was getting low and a beam of sunlight shone through a gap in the clouds over Government House. By the time I got into a good spot to take a photo it was gone. 

One day of my short week done, two to go! 

I'm back

The golden hour from Mt Coot-tha

I'm back from my trip to Brisbane. I had a wonderful time. It's a beautiful part of the world, the sun shone (I had to wear sunscreen! In winter!) and I loved meeting my online friends, Gillian and Victoria, and spending time with them. Gillian and I saw whales! Victoria and I saw many pademelons!

I got back late Thursday night and I'm still recovering. Holidays are exhausting! I'll write more about my trip and post more photos in the next few days because I'm too tired to do it now. 

Luke left for his trip to England and Ireland about 10 days ago and is away for another week. I really enjoy having the place to myself, but I miss him, more than I have other times we've been apart. I hope he's having a ball, but I'm looking forward to him returning.  

I've made it to two months without buying any shoes or clothes. Two months! Yeah, OK that's not very long, but I'm pleased with myself, particularly as it's been easy.  

Less yearning = more happiness

I'm not sure if it's my new(ish) shorter working week or my now-month-long shopping ban—or a combination of both—but I feel very content lately. Like a fat cow in a field of buttercups chewing its cud in the sunshine. 

I'm not at all surprised that working less has made me happier, but I am surprised that not spending money on shoes and clothes has boosted my happiness and boosted it so quickly. I think it's because I'm not in an almost constant state of wanting stuff. Of yearning. 

Marian Keyes writes about freedom from yearning in Making It Up As I Go Along (which I read on the weekend) in a chapter about how interviewers often ask her about what's on her (*grinds teeth*) bucket list, but she doesn't have one. In fact, she has fairly modest goals—such as doing a first aid course.

"At this point, my inquisitor is openly contemptuous of me—because the rule is that we're meant to have aspirations, five-year plans, things to aim for. We have to be improving constantly, to stand still is to regress.

"But here's how it is: I spent my entire life in a state of yearning. During my (very ordinary) childhood, happiness belonged in the far-off future and the markers kept being moved. I'd be okay when I became a teenager. No, when I left school. No, when I got a degree.

"My twenties were a decade of suspended animation—before I could declare my life open for business, I needed the right man, the right job, the right hair, the right legs and the right lifestyle...

"Unaccountably, everything remained wrong. Until, through a small amount of rare proactive effort on my part, coupled with a huge amount of dumb luck, I ended up getting a book published. And I met a nice man. I got almost everything I yearned for...but to my great surprise, I was not yearn-free.

"Even as I was writing the first book, I was already worried about the next one—what if I couldn't write it, what if it was awful, what if everyone hated the current one and it all became irrelevant anyway? Those worries never went away, to the point where every book that I was due to write in my lifetime I yearned to have already written so that I didn't have to worry about them...

"But I don't want to live in a state of yearning. I don't want to move through my days not touching the sides. I don't want my life to be deferred until everything is perfect, because that will be never. Instead I want to want what I have...

"I'm at my happiest when I want nothing. Even happier when I realise that I'm entitled to nothing—but that I've been granted so much."

(That went on a bit too long, but the context is important). I haven't expunged all my desires (I want chocolate, and I want to sleep in every day, and I want to eat hot chips and take more holidays), but being free of the yearning to own this gorgeous dress and that awesome pair of shoes and other stuff I don't need is wonderful. 

New stuff, compliments, coincidence

My recent online purchase arrived today. No, not shoes or clothes! Books! Books are totally allowed. I got a couple of Meghan Daum essay collections: Unspeakable and Selfish, Shall and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen writers on the decision not to have kids. 

They arrived in a large, square tough bag, making a flat lump in the middle of it. It looked like a giant piece of ravioli.

I wore a new cardigan today...new in that I bought it last year but only wore it for the first time today (certainly not new since my shopping ban started on 1 June). Several people complimented me on it, particularly the colour (royal blue). 

After work I walked for a block or two along Flinders Street behind a woman in a beige coat and cropped pants (I mainly noticed the cropped pants because I thought she must have cold ankles). I went into a supermarket and bought a few things then caught the tram. When I got off the tram at my stop, she got off at the same time! It's not the first time a coincidence like that has happened, sometimes on the way to work, sometimes on the way home.