What Makes You Happy?

What makes you happy and are you doing it?

I'm currently reading Gretchen Rubin's, The Happiness Project, and I'm up to the chapter about making time for and researching what you think is fun. Like Gretchen I sometimes do things I think I should do as opposed to what I want to do or what makes me happy.

While I thought about this and how much fun I had shopping with my friends this week I realized I had given up a lot of scrounging around in little shops and arranging and rearranging things in my house because I felt like I ought to spend less time doing those things. Much in the same way that I feel I ought to enjoy parties and museums when what I like much more are rearranging books on a shelf or creating something.

I wish party invitations filled me with excitement the way they do my daughter, but the truth is I prefer small gatherings and quiet evenings. Yet I think weddings are lots of fun.

I hate staying up late and can even feel resentful about it.  I adore being in bed "on time." I was recently out with my husband and some friends and everyone began poking fun at me around my bedtime. That's okay. If I don't take good care of myself no one else is going to. 

My circadian rhythm is something I feel is important to my health.


Read about my bedtime routine here.

 I love getting up early enough to catch the sunrise. I usually dislike classes and instruction of any kind and prefer a trial and error method of learning. But then I just love to instruct other people in the very way that I hate.

I know. I'm a tangled mess of contradictions, but I think we all are.

And a lot of things I used to think were fun and interesting I am apparently just kind of over.

Like being overly informed. The news junkie in me has died a quite unceremonious death and I find that my happiness is increased by not knowing every boring detail of some current debate. I also find that while I used to so freely share my opinion, I very often now sit quietly and listen even if I know that someone is misinformed and plainly wrong about something (well, usually). Both research and my own experience has taught me that few people actually want to know the truth. They only want their own opinions to be confirmed or to argue. Not only that, they actually see the truth as threatening. All that arguing and debating I used to engage in, was a huge waste.

Not fun any more. I'm out. Please refer to Google.

I've noticed that part of being an adult is accepting that change is inevitable and it's perfectly fine to say that you just don't enjoy something that you used to or that a lot of other people do. I'm sending my husband off to a Super Bowl party alone because I've spent the last week and a half being super social and what sounds like fun right now is having the game on in the background while I work on something creative.

Of course that doesn't mean I wouldn't have fun if I went. I'm sure that I would but since it isn't really an intimate group of friends it also means there's going to be small talk which I find exhausting. Plus I won't want to stay out late and if I don't go my husband doesn't have to worry about if I'm having a good time. Do men do that? Last week I went to see The Greatest Showman with friends. One friend who had seen it previously with her husband said she enjoyed it so much more the second time.

"I didn't have to worry about if you were enjoying it."

I'd love to know if this is a female phenomenon. Do men enjoy things more because they aren't so consumed with whether or not anyone else is having a good time?

So what about you? What makes you happy? What doesn't give you any joy at all that you do because you feel like you should enjoy it? What have you given up because it wasn't fun anymore?