The Happiness Project

The idea came to me from Pinterest: get a huge stack of notecards, write the date at the top of each one of them. And over the years, every day, write the year on the date-card and one short sentence or thing you did. What you will have in the end is hopefully a beautiful collection of memories.

I was going to do it. I had a goal: go to Walmart, buy four 100-packs of notecards, and spend an hour writing the date at the top of each one. Then on January 1st, I would begin my journey. It would be like a New Year's Resolution thingy. That would last many years. If it worked.

But today, my uncle and aunt got me a little notebook called The Happiness Project. It's a "five-year record and one-sentence journal." It's basically a little book with the format I just described with the notecards. It's based on a best-selling book by Gretchen Rubin who apparently invented and did the project in order to find happiness through her memories.

Now, I don't intend to find more happiness, as I feel I already have quite enough, thank you. But any of my close friends or family members will be able to tell you that my memory is horrible. I would like to remember better what I have done, and even if this project doesn't help, I'm sure I will still look back and say, "I didn't know I did that! How interesting!" I think future years will be more rewarding than this first year when I have nothing to look back on when I write each day, but it will still be fun. I'm not exactly sure why I want to do it so badly, but I'm very excited about this little book.

The book instructs me to write one sentence a day, basically to "capture the essence" of my day. Well today I started it and wrote four fragmented sentences. Maybe I will get better at narrowing my thoughts to one sentence. Maybe it doesn't matter. I wanted to start on January 1st but I couldn't wait. Here's what I have written for December 25th:

2012* Wonderful Christmas. Got several puzzles and a TON of books. How am I going to read them all?? Found out I can't go to ________ tomorrow for the concert. :(

So that's the beginning of a personal journey/adventure for me. If anything regarding it gets more interesting, I may let you know, but it may just wait until 5 years are up and I need to let you know how it went. So stay updated! Haha.


God bless & Merry Christmas.