PadawanOfHappiness

 I found this on Facebook and it really struck me as very easy to do and very timely. My grandmother once gave me a tip: In difficult times, you move forward in small steps. Do what you have to do, but little by little. Don't think about the future, or what may happen tomorrow. Wash the dishes. Remove the dust. Write a letter. Make a soup. You see? You are advancing step by step. Take a step and stop. Rest a little. Praise yourself. Take another step. Then another. You won't notice, but your steps will grow more and more. And the time will come when you can think about the future without crying.   - Elena Mikhalkova    

I go through phases of energetic de-cluttering and then fizzle, really what I have is a serious case of start-itist.  I have been looking around my house and it is overwhelming the toys, the clutter, the paper, the workstations that are ok, but not the best solution. Right now I am trying to capitalize on my energy and have started in one room to prepare it so that is is better organized and more conducive to using the space as a dedicated space for the kids for distance learning.  This is my happiness hack, de-cluttering is giving me a sense of happiness and calm. I took this messy table and worked with my young Padawans to clean out some of the papers, broken toys, and random things.  We tosses, returned things to their proper place, and put things in bins. I then assembled larger shelves to make the table higher and therefore more useful, the kids can stand, or they can sit on a stool. To finish this project I need to do a bit more de-cluttering of papers, and add a fe...

I have accepted that my kids are not going to daycare/camp this summer, I am sure that I could get them in somewhere but honestly it is too much of a hassle and since we stopped contributing to our child care account and can roll over that money it seems to make sense to just let this go. My school district has announced that they will re-open in the fall, woohoo!  Then they sent home a survey about how comfortable we are with this plan.  I sort of expected this and knew that school wouldn't be a sure thing.  I could decide how I would react to this, I could spend the next month and a half with thoughts of dread, anger, and frustration or I could look for ways to make the best of it while I had time on my side. The way we have set up the home office and had the kids doing school work for the last 1/3 of the year will not work.  Mr. Padawan has expressed frustration at the clutter in the office (and elsewhere) and it is driving him nuts.  Honestly it is driving m...

I am feeling a bit out of sorts with all the COVID-19 chatter and sort of posted a mini rant on IG and I was going to simply embed the post here rather than retype it.  But IG's developers in their infinite wisdom do not seem to allow for the actual picture to show but it will show you the caption. What is the point of that?  If IG wants me to check out stuff on IG and drive traffic there, then the lack of a photo on an embedded post is not going to get me there.  I don't want to leave the site I am on to check out an unknown quantity that is a photo that I only have the caption for. I follow the info on IG's Help Page and this is the result...it is less than inspiring. View this post on Instagram I am so tired of the repeated sensationalized news while listening to the radio, so I am rediscovering all the cool and varied music I already have. I am having trouble finding fellow humans in the calm, cautious, and ...

I have trouble re-reading books even when I want to re-read them. I just love to read so, of course, I have some books that I find worth re-reading but most of them I enjoy them and move on they served their purpose of entertaining me or giving me something to think about and then I move on.  It is fleeting but good. However, there are books that I want to re-read because they really helped me with something that was going on in my life and I still hold them dear to me.  And I want to re-read them as part of a tune-up if you will of my life.  However, that has been a problem for me and I wanted to solve it because it was actually making me unhappy that I didn't get around to reading them. As with anything you want to do you need to make time to do it, time won't just magically appear.  This meant I had to find something to motivate me to get it done.  I believe I have stumbled onto something that is working for me, book clubs.  I noticed on my town's...

Last weekend was the super bowl and I had bought a pre cut veggie tray for some snacks.  As it turned out I was the only one that ate it.   While at first this was a big annoying as I thought I had wasted my money, however I found that week I was extremely munchy and found myself snacking all week long. So in the end I did not waste money since I ate the whole veggie tray, and I didn't feel too badly about all the snacking I was doing because I was sticking to the veggies so it was reasonably healthy.  I say reasonably because it did come with a great ranch dip, that good point is that I ate all the veggies before the dip was done I see that as a win.  My goal is to try to eat less dip each time I try this. So this week I bought another tray for me to snack on all week long.  This makes me happy because I am making better choices with snacking.  And yes I probably could spend less by cutting up my own veggies and maybe I will get to that point but...