Tag Archives: Happiness

Jan 10 2012
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Life, Teaching

Kettle Corn, Sparkly Shoes, and Being a Little Girl

Early this evening I found myself sitting on my kitchen counter, eating a bag of kettle corn.  Let me be specific, when I say eating a bag of kettle corn, I don’t mean a handful.  Likewise, when I describe myself as sitting on the counter, I was fully on the counter, like feet extended out on the counter, not just casually leaning against it.  I did not even bother to take my jacket off.  I just came in, sat on the counter, and ate kettle corn, sulking.  This may all seem trivial, but for those of you that know me, I routinely attempt to eat no sugar and the act of sitting on the counter gorging myself in it was pure rebellion.  I was acting like a small child.

It took my phone ringing to realize that I was pouting.  Pouting about a bad end to my afternoon and an overwhelmed moment of stress, I was having a moment.  Which brings me to here and now.  I’ve decided that 2012 is the year that I’m finally ready to shed my pouty baby self and be done with her.    You would think that by 28 I would be well past that phase, but I still have my moments.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that I looked a lot like many of my fourth graders, sitting there throwing popcorn at the dog and feeling sorry for myself.

Somehow, all of this makes me think about something that I said last week to another teacher, “The secret to happiness is sparkly shoes.”  Wearing a new pair of Toms with threading that sparkle, I walked around in a good mood all week, smiling when I noticed that I was wearing sparkly shoes.  Upon discussing my happy mood I decided that it HAD to be the shoes.  I felt like a little girl.  The simple things, I tell you, the simple things!  Apparently the child inside of me is not all bad.

I leave you with this cute child for no other reason than that her picture made me smile.  I found her when googling sparkly Toms and wished that I could be as stylish as she is…  I could not find my shoes, (I kept getting the crazy sequin ones!), but trust me, they’d make you smile too.  I guess that growing up is finding the balance between letting the pouty child go and keeping the one that is still full of wonder about the simple things, like sparkly shoes and kettle corn.

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Jan 07 2012
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Home, Life

A simple kind of happy…

It’s early Saturday afternoon and I feel happy.  Not over-the-top, I-cannot-believe-it happy, but sentimental, quiet happy.  I woke up late, basking in rare, more-than-ten hours, sleep.  Instead of jumping out of bed to conquer my usual Saturday morning to-do list, I just lay there, awakening slowly with my dog buried deep under the covers, the cat stalking us for her morning wet food, and my husband squinting at me through his own sleep, wary of my eternal enthusiasm for morning jokes and horseplay when I awaken before him.  It felt nice to linger.

Instead of pouting when he left to go have breakfast and hit up a movie with his dad, I turned up Pandora loud, tuning into my usual Iron and Wine eclecticism.  Cleaning the house I did not feel annoyed that this was the way I was spending my day off.  Instead, I felt grateful for my house, grateful for my little family of Alex, my dog, and our cat.  Grateful for the sun and a whole day without work.  Now, I’m sitting on our couch, taking in the odor of wet dog as Simon’s six-month-overdue bath was finally crossed off my to-do list, drinking a delicious cup of tea (thanks Dana!), still listening to Pandora, and typing.  I feel happy.  Like I said, not an over-the-top happy, but hopefully a more sustainable kind of happy, a real kind of happy.
My newly-bathed, ever companion
And a cup of tea… Perfect.
It’s funny how whenever I start to feel this way, I get nervous.  I become scared that it will go away too quickly.  I try to figure out how to hold on to it, how to make sure that it doesn’t disappear, allowing the anxiety of losing it to cloud the experience.  I don’t trust happiness, sad, but true.  This time, I’m trying instead to just be in it and know that when it goes, it will come back again.  I’m trying to learn to trust it.

Even so, I find myself examining the recipe for this current contentment.  This time, I think it is a culmination of the end of the holidays and the beginning of a bright year.  Last year, letting go of the holidays was unusually painful.  This year, even though they were among my favorite of this lifetime, I’m simultaneously excited for 2012:  I missed my students and enjoyed seeing them this week.  I am reinvigorated to figure out how to teach them and make them feel loved.  I cannot wait to get home each night and work on my book.  I am surrounded by amazing people.

I’m in love with my life, just as it is right now.  For once, it’s not about where I’m going, but where I am.  Wow, writing this now, I don’t actually think that I’ve ever felt like this before.  I mean, I’ve been happy, but not in this deeply satisfied, full-of-purpose, present way.  It’s actually making me tear up just to type this.  Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of pain, anxiety, and uncertainty around me, but somehow there is still this overarching sense of contentment, like I’m on the right path.  I don’t write this to brag, but instead to share, remind, and reflect, because I know that like everything, it won’t always feel this way.  Even in the course of a week, there are ups and downs that make it easy to forget how to get here.  Nonetheless, I’m still searching for the secret to consciously cultivating lasting happiness.  It has to be out there somewhere…

I leave you with these little gems, each in some way inspiration for my book and each repeat offenders on my Iron and Wine Pandora station:

Happy Saturday.

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Jan 01 2012
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Life

So what if you don’t keep your New Year’s resolutions!

People always grumble about New Year’s resolutions. They complain about how they never keep them, so why make them…

I disagree.

Making my New Year’s resolutions is a yearly ritual. Thanks in large part to my dad, I have sat down every year since I was a kid to make my resolutions. For the past few years, I’ve called them “Envisioned,” instead of resolutions. For example, last year was “2011 Envisioned.” The simple act of calling my resolutions “Envisioned” has helped me to refocus my intentions on what I want my year to look like instead of how I want to change myself. Of course, those traditional little resolutions related to change still sneak themselves in there, but the big goal of sitting down and looking forward is to actually ask myself what I want in life. That’s a pretty exciting and important question!

Last week, I dug up my resolutions for the past few years and reread them. Even though I may not have successfully given up sugar or gone to the gym religiously, it was really exciting to be able to look back five years and see that overall I’ve moved my life in a direction that I already foresaw back then. It’s strange to revisit your past self and realize that you really are the same person! That may sound odd, but a lot of times, I think we see our current self as so different and evolved from our previous versions, when really, we are our past, present, and future self simultaneously.

Okay, okay, I’m getting a little metaphysical, I know, but this is a concept that fascinates me.  At any rate, going through my previous resolutions reminded me that I really am, to some degree, controlling my destiny through envisioning what I want my life to look like each year. I also noticed that I break my goals into common themes each year, whether I made my resolutions in a journal, as a collage, or on a gigantic piece of watercolor canvas.  These themes include:  Health, Family, Finance, Career, and (Intentional) Joy. Even the goals that changed because life changed are interesting to go back and reread. Remembering these changes reminds me of different points in my life that I may have forgotten without these road maps. Most exciting, is seeing the goals that are many years old finally coming to fruition, (finding a job I like, writing a book, traveling, etc.).

I think that New Year’s Day is becoming one of my favorite holidays as an adult! I am genuinely excited to sit down today and envision 2012. If you have made it through my rambling thoughts above, I invite you to join me today in envisioning your life in 2012.  Stop worrying about whether you’ll keep your resolutions and just make them. What do you want your life to look like this year? What do you need to do to make this happen? Dream big, you might surprise yourself.

Over the years, my resolutions have taken on a variety of different mediums.
Regardless of the medium, I have always broken up my resolutions into categories.
This was one of my favorite years to look back at; I made it during college and through my travels since then I have always thought back to this collage and spotted the scenes that mimic what I envisioned.  The most memorable was when Alex and I moved to Berkeley and found an old church up the hill from our apartment that looked exactly like the picture third down from the upper right-hand corner.  I believe that we do create at least some of our reality, so use this time to create one that you’re excited about!
“To see is to create!”
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Nov 26 2011
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Life, Teaching

Perspective

This morning I woke up excited to go back to school on Monday.  Instead of a dream where nothing was going right in my classroom, I dreamed that I had a fabulous day where everything was coming together and I felt like an effective teacher.  Dreams are very powerful in setting the tone during my waking hours.  Now, I am sitting here re-energized to go back to school, excited to see my students, eager to try some new tricks and to be consistent with my old ones.

It sure beats the dreams I have where everything is going wrong and I wake up a stress-case!  It’s funny too, just yesterday I was telling a friend how the end of breaks are always so hard for me, how I start to stress about time slipping away from me, about how quickly I’ll be back absorbed in the challenges of my classroom.  However, with a shift in perspective brought on by a restful week and an encouraging dream, I’m now sitting here excited to go back.

Realizing how easily my perspective can shift from a stressful one to an excited one causes me to wonder whether there is an easy trick for always remembering to reframe my thinking.  I feel like it is trickier than it sounds, but I also think it is funny how often something seemingly little can help me change how I see things.  In this case, I’d like to find a way to always remember to step back and look at my job as an exciting and rewarding challenge when I start to become stressed, overwhelmed, or nervous.  I’m determined that it is possible.  If you have any tricks, I’d love to hear them.

So, happy Saturday.  I am determined not to look at today as two days before I have to go back to work or as “Oh no, time is running out.”  Instead, I am determined to embrace today as its own, completely independent entity full of events and activities that I have been looking forward to, as well as a chance to get caught up on little tasks before everything gets busy again.  May you have an equally enjoyable and productive day and remember that how you look at everything around you matters too.

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Oct 29 2011
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Teaching

Job satisfaction, life satisfaction

Alright, so this week has not lived up to last week in its revelatory nature, but it has been a good week.  Not perfect, or over-the-top amazing, but good.  I guess that few weeks in life really are perfect or over-the-top amazing, so good is satisfying enough.

When I left my old job, I left in search of job satisfaction.  I was determined that there had to be a job out there that I could feel good about on a consistent basis.  A job where I would not while away the hours feeling frustrated, bored, slave-like, and stressed simultaneously.  For awhile, I even lost faith that such a job existed, at least within my grasp.  This is why making the leap to teaching was such a gigantic leap of faith for me.  I was willing to give up money and prestige for the fantasy of job satisfaction, but I was uncertain that job satisfaction was truly possible.

Fast forward one year four months, and, at least this week, I feel satisfied.  Teaching, though full of its own stresses, moments of failure, long long hours, and public scrutiny, is also immensely satisfying when it goes well.  Breakthroughs with challenging students, sparks of love for learning, and being able to share myself as inspiration to kids that really need it, feels good.  Really good.  My students are smiling more, I am smiling more.  Thursday I actually came home from work with a big smile on my face and that sense of job satisfaction that had seemed so illusive.

Yes, I still feel stressed, and yes, I come home more tired than I ever have from any job, but I also feel passionate for the first time ever about what I do.  This morning, I woke up to read a teaching book of my own volition.  No one is making me read it.  I want to read it.  I am deriving pleasure from reading it.  It is called The Book Whisperer, written by Donnalyn Miller, a teacher that requires her sixth graders, regardless of reading ability, to read forty substantial books of their choosing each year.  I expected to find a book about reading less-than engaging, but instead it has reminded me of my own deep love for reading and ignited my desire to inspire that same love in my students.  It is stuff like this which makes me love teaching.

A recommended read for all teachers!

Even this week, teaching has been a mixture of emotions, sliding back and forth on the job satisfaction scale.  I began the week being observed by teachers from a neighboring school during a few of my less-fine moments, leaving me feeling shitty about my teaching, (for lack of a better adjective).  It is such a strange part of teaching that what works one day may not work for the same students the next.  It also seems to be a common trend that the moments I am the most proud of, the moments I wish the whole world was watching, are also the moments that my revolving door of observers are not present.

I ended the week feeling like I still have so much room to grow but also like what I’m doing is working, a little bit at a time.  The students are beginning to do the right thing on their own, quieting down more quickly as I also grow in my own patience.  I can also feel their engagement and love for learning grow, even if it is still just an emergent sprout in need of a lot of encouragement.  I expect that there will be a thousand more highs and lows, including what seems to be the weekly moment where I ask myself how long I will last as a teacher.  However, a deep, underlying sense of job satisfaction is beginning to emerge that is spilling over into my greater sense of life satisfaction.  I have heard it said that teaching is more than a job, that it is a lifestyle choice.  I am beginning to feel what this means.  Today, at least, it is a satisfying choice.

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Sep 29 2011
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Teaching

Honesty.

I’m tired.  I feel beat up by teaching this week.  So far it has been such a roller coaster of happy and frustrating moments.  This week I’m on the frustrating down-swing.  I feel ineffective, which I know must be the root of my dissatisfaction.  I just don’t get why sometimes I feel highly effective and other times I feel like I suck.  I’ve been told time and time again that this is what it feels like to be a first-year teacher, but sometimes it is hard to remember what it feels like when it’s good.  I’m nowhere close to throwing in the towel, I am just feeling frustrated and think it’s important to be honest about it.

Even with this feeling, I don’t regret my decision to teach.  It has changed my life.  It has made me tougher and given me back a lot of my self confidence in dealing with people that went missing for awhile.  It has gotten me out of working in a windowless cube for eleven hours a day, (not that I’m working less, because really I’m working more, and for far less money).  I now know what the weather is like outside and get to actually be outside during daylight hours.  I get to watch the seasons change and hardly sit in front of a computer.  I get to talk to people all the time, young and old.  I finally use my Spanish.  I get to be a dork and the kids love me all the more for it.  Even if my hours are long, I get some flexibility in choosing when to spend them, and I get more than three weeks off a year.  Most days I feel like I’m making an important difference in the world, even if it is hard.

So with that little dose of honesty, I will gather myself together and do it all again tomorrow.

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Sep 07 2011
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Life

Live Life, Be Brave

I’m thinking about getting a tattoo.

One of my most childish secrets is that when I was grappling most with my anxiety, I would put on the necklace below each day as a reminder to be brave.  It helped.  A lot.  Even now that my anxiety is just a whisper, I still wear it almost everyday, accompanied by one of two Celtic knots.

Thank you Jen for the poignant reminder to live, and Alex for the Celtic knots of our family.

As I was putting it on the other day, I thought that maybe I should get those words tattooed on me, as a permanent reminder that life is short and that it is up to me to be brave and live it.  It is a funny thing in life how living to our full potential often takes the greatest courage.  I do not want to ever forget that I control my courage instead of my courage controlling me.

If I choose to get a tattoo, I also want to integrate the tree of life somehow.  I am fascinated by its symbolism throughout many cultures, including the Celts.  It annoys me that the tree is becoming trendy, because my connection to it roots back further, to my childhood.  I used to sit high up in the branches of old trees and talk to them.  They even told me their secrets about life and our interconnectedness.  No, I was not on drugs.  Yes, maybe I am part hippie.

All joking aside, I really never thought that there would be anything permanent enough for me to want to have tattooed on my body.  However, anyone that really knows me, knows that I am an odd mixture of over-thinking and impulse.  It will be interesting to see which side wins this battle…  Maybe I should just buy myself a tree of life charm to add to my necklace and save myself the trouble!

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Sep 03 2011
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Family

Here is Your Life…

The night before last I had a dream that I showed up at my dad’s house and found a party in my honor in the backyard.  Attending this party were all of the people in my life that have ever mattered to me, even if only for brief periods or in small but significant ways.  If you are reading this, you were probably there, too.  It was a little like my wedding but bigger in scope because of the wide range of people there.  It was one of those dreams that remains visually haunting throughout your day, almost as though you’re still dreaming it hours later.

The funny thing is that I spent the whole day thinking back to the “Here is Your Life” segment of Sesame Street where all of the old friends and family magically appear to surprise the contestant, (in this case a carton of eggs!):

Okay, I know that was corny, (pun and reference to the clip intended), but it is interesting to me that “Here is Your Life” was the most memorable segment of Sesame Street for me growing up.  I’ve often thought back to it over the years, even if my memory of it was a little different than the reality of watching it for the first time in decades just now.  But, I often find that dreams are like those segments as people from your past mysteriously reappear from the depths of your subconscious.  This most recent dream was like “Here is Your Life” on steroids with a combination of both long-lost and present friends and family all together in one space in my brain.  It left me thinking about how many people have touched my life in various ways and how the routine of life limits how much time I have for everyone, even those that are closest to me.

This is an important reminder because I deeply believe that it is the connections that we share with the people in our lives that make life matter.  I feel like the universe has been shouting this at me between the events in my family this week and this dream that still will not leave my head.  On both sides of my family there will be gatherings in the next two weeks that mark the importance of coming together.

These pictures of then and now-ish of my dad’s family gatherings are a tribute to my Uncle Mike, who was good at bringing us together, and to my big family, who I hope will come together more often in the coming years.

So, here is my life, and I am happy that you are ALL part of it!

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Aug 27 2011
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Family, Life

Cheers to new traditions!

I’m finding it very difficult to sleep in on Saturday mornings after getting up early everyday during the week.  Today, however, I did not mind, because Alex got up with me to ride our bikes to the gym and then the farmers’ market.  I had no idea that just riding our bikes instead of driving could make me like where we live more, but it did!  I had assumed that a farmers’ market in a mall parking lot would not feel the same as the markets that I love in cute little city centers, but it was surprisingly enjoyable.  Live music, beautiful flowers, fresh fruits and veggies.  I think we have a new Saturday morning tradition!

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Aug 24 2011
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Life

Happy now instead of happy someday

Today when I logged into my blog, I had to change the background.  Seeing something that reminded me of school made me not want to write.  Apparently, teacher brain has its limits, and I’ve reached them.  This week is about delineating work and home.  It is also about consciously working toward happiness.

Yesterday was a rough day of school.  The students were extra challenging, my air conditioning broke, and I found myself trying to have a chips and salsa party in a room full of thirty sweating 9 year-olds.  The combination of 85 degrees Fahrenheit and 25 grams of sugar in the “natural” box drinks that I purchased was too much.  Note-to-self, I am not the kind of teacher that enjoys unstructured time.

It seemed like a good way to help them remember our acronym for editing and revising (CHIPS & salsa), but it turned out to be more of a headache than it was worth.  I spent the whole day trying to keep everything positive so that we would not lose our party by the end of the day, but it tanked by 2:30 PM when the sugar and the heat hit simultaneously.  Today I made up for it by being lightning fast in my consequences and allowing the tone to shift into negative territory when it needed to, (something I avoided yesterday), and it felt so much better.  I admire teachers who can keep it positive ALL the time but I also recognize that for my own sanity I have to use what works for me, which is a combination of both negative and positive tones.  I feel like I learned a really important lesson.

After my semi-disastrous Monday, (I’m sure it wasn’t entirely disastrous, it just felt that way to my OCD, perfectionist self), I came home feeling really unhappy.  Being a little on the OCD side of the spectrum can be dangerous as a teacher.  Not only can it keep you in your classroom far beyond the call of duty in the evening rearranging desks and tidying up the upheaval of the day, but it can also result in an unrealistic expectation of what teaching should look like.  Yesterday I was feeling really down on myself for not being able to successfully use a positive vibe all-day-long to trick my students into being complacent angels.

When I got home, I found myself calculating how my teaching career could be a stepping stone to something else that interests me, like policy work, curriculum design, a PhD, founding new schools, writing…  And that’s when it hit me that I’m back to a spot that I routinely get to where I have to take control of my own happiness instead of counting the days until I can be happy again.  Happy now, no matter the circumstances, instead of happy someday.

As I’ve said before, happy for me is sometimes a conscious effort, instead of something that just magically happens.  As I pushed my tired body through an hour of yoga last night, I really focused on what I want and what motivates me to teach.  Already, teaching has been such a roller coaster for me.  I’m obviously passionate about it and why it matters, but some days are really hard.  Some weeks are really hard.  As it’s turning out, some months are really hard.  Spending 60+ hours a week doing a job that is far underpaid for the amount of expertise, energy, and love required can feel confusing.  I’ve heard it called the hardest job on earth, and some days it feels like it.  But, the challenge is also what keeps OCDers like me enthralled.  It is such an intricate web of demands that I feel much more engaged and mentally stimulated than I did writing economic reports on some very complex topics (mezzanine loan structures anyone? Bueller?).  It’s funny, when I was fresh out of college, I always assumed that teaching elementary school would be too elementary to be engaging, but so far I am very very very wrong.

That said, I still don’t know that teaching is the key to my long term happiness, but last night the conclusion that I reached was that it does not matter.  Instead of thinking long term, I need to think right now, which is teaching.  How do I make the most of each day and consciously cultivate happiness?

Ironically, part of the answer to this question is creating clearer boundaries between work and home, since it has all been blurring together lately.  The biggest irony of this is that I started my blog today by changing the background away from school but it is still all that I ended up talking about.  Oh well.  I guess that teacher brain prevails again.  The good news is that I’m already feeling happier in my reminder that happiness is sometimes a conscious process.  I’m also happy in my hell-bent desire to take a good vacation soon.  The only question is tropical, South America, or Europe…  At least I have the time off to make it happen!

Even a weekend in Tahoe is sounding pretty damn satisfying about now.  😉

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Jul 22 2011
4 Comments
Life

Me Today: A Happiness Manifesto

Today is the best day of my life. I have that written on my refrigerator and remind myself of it anytime that I start to feel ungrateful or unhappy, (even on the most exciting days, there are still moments when I have to remind myself of this).  It is true though.  As much as days past bring me happiness in their memories and days coming bring me happiness in their anticipation, no day compares to the only day that I have right now, today.  It is amazing how just reminding myself of this while sitting in traffic or doing household chores centers me into a space of gratitude and presence in the moment.  This whole pursuit of happiness thing is not a new arena for me, I’ve read all kinds of books and taken little gems here and there, but I find that it is the little daily reminders that actually make the biggest difference for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually consider myself a pretty happy person.  I just find that maximizing my happiness requires ongoing maintenance, reminders, and study.  I am in the middle of reading The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, which is actually part of what inspired me to start a blog as a space to keep my writing fresh and find happiness in something that I enjoy doing, writing.  I love books like her’s because even if our views on happiness and life may not be precisely the same, I always gain little gems from other people’s experiences, (which is part of what I love about reading other people’s blogs!). 

In the book, she talks about a study where people were asked to rate their happiness on a scale from 1-10.  On a recent road trip, my husband and I talked about where we rated ourselves a year ago and today, and I came to the crazy realization that in just one year, I had brought my happiness from a 5 to a pretty consistent 8-9!  Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be on summer vacation, taking a road trip through the beautiful forests of Oregon with my husband and my dog when rating my happiness… But, I think that’s where the 8-9 comes in.  At that moment, I was probably at a 9-10, but in the realities of life, my happiness fluctuates and probably averages out at about an 8.5.

The point in sharing my self-perceived happiness is not to gloat or paint an unreal picture of my life.  Having just completed a year-long boot camp of full-time co-teaching and earning my master’s degree in my spare hours while dealing with the day-to-day struggles of low-income students, learning to hold my own in a classroom, navigating the realities of securing a job, and balancing the needs of my family and friends, my life has not been without recent challenges.  However, what is so striking about all of this, is not that my life is easier than it was a year ago, but that it is significantly better despite its huge challenges!  Am I happy every moment of everyday?  No.  But overall I’m a happier person and it was within my power to change my own happiness.  That is what I want to share. 

So, how did I find this happiness?  In part, it began with my quest to seek out as many points of view on happiness as I could.  But, more so, it came from the courage to walk away from something secure and outwardly respected to something scary, new, uncertain, and with far less pay, (a point that ironically hung me up the most and in the end has mattered the least!)… I quit my job as an economic analyst at a respected consulting firm to become a teacher in an urban, low-income school.  I left behind a period of time in my life that was characterized by frequent anxiety and pretty deep lows in search of something better.  The biggest part of this leap of faith was actually believing that something better truly existed.

The year spent in this endeavor changed my life.  I rediscovered my voice.  Literally and figuratively.  I had to learn how to be loud, (or loud for me!), and how to speak in groups of people again.  I developed a new sense of self-confidence.  Sitting in my cube as an economic analyst, I spent most of my time isolated, writing away about things that I did not always care about.  Now, I am in front of people all the time and I like it!  This is huge because when I first decided to quit my job and begin my program I spent a night awake on a friend’s futon having a panic attack about whether I could handle it all.  But, that is when my mantra became one day at a time, and it worked!  No feat seems impossible when you look at it one day at a time.

Now, here I am, wrapping up my summer vacation, sitting on the floor of my living room, laptop out, cat in front of me, dog cooling himself from the Sacramento heat on the cool tiles of our entry, and husband lounging behind me on our couch.  I really never have been happier.  Yes, I am again nervous about what the school year will bring, (particularly since I will now be on my own instead of co-teaching), but I am also happy.  I am happy that I have a job that makes me excited, happy that I have a sweet little home and family, happy that there are so many people in my life that I love and am grateful for, (including, most likely you if you are reading this!).

Maybe it’s the juice fast that my husband has us doing, (a topic for another entry and a possible cause of my ramblings!), but I’m feeling particularly open and grateful today.  If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to share in my spontaneous happiness manifesto.

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