A query, and Typesetting on the internet
When it rains, it pours...at least for blogging.
Do you remember when we were in middle school/high school/college and you thought "If I had a boyfriend/best friend/dog/parent/*insert what you wanted here*, then I'd be happy"? For me, the boyfriend usually was first on the list, followed by the dog.
I feel like I'm getting wiser because I can now isolate the individual wants versus the statement "I would be happy if things in my life were aligned". I no longer need a boyfriend. (I still desperately want a dog - to the point that I'm going to get an old fart of a cat after xmas because that's the closest cats ever get to the perfect state of dog-dom.) I still get intensely overwhelmed by life sometimes - the jobbie-job, making money yet somehow not making money, why I can't be one of those ultra-cool food bloggers, relationship queries, why is everyone else but me getting married/buying houses/getting pets, etc. And yet I feel pretty happy. Today and yesterday, at least. That's as far as my memory goes, so I'm happy like a goldfish!
I'm getting distracted from the point. I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between believing that something else controls your happiness vs. believing that you control it. I don't know how much deeper and new-agey I can get. Must be the yoga. I think the expectations we set for ourselves, others, and society exert too much influence on our self-worth. In the end, for me, my day-to-day happiness sometimes boils down to the number of people I've had a positive interaction with, and the quality of that interaction. It's not about whether I'm good enough, whether my friends are like the ones on TV, or that #$%@ing driver who cut me off. It's about making my yoga instructor and for goodness sakes the ENTIRE class smile because I'm about to fall over and am windmilling my arms frantically yet silently like Wile E. Coyote. Ok, well sometimes it's more about the other drivers out there. But I try to use that whole 'third eye' thing to counter it.
And now for some not-me content:
Wow.
I never knew there were 19 types of quotation marks. I'm too self-concious to type more.
*technical question: how can I get the thinga-ma-bobbies '<' to show up w/o the quotes in HTML? As in < insert something here >. And when you end a sentence w/ etc., does that period serve as both the abbreviation marker and the end of sentence marker? And where does the question mark go when you think to yourself "does this go before the end quotation or after?" And this doesn't count as typing more, all you sticklers out there who care!*
Typesetting
btw, its just "<" or ">", you don't need to tag it like html. It is similar syntax to the non-breaking space character ( ).
e.g.:
2 < 5
The actual less than sign wont show up in this post because I only allow partial html on the blog here. But it will show up if read by an html processor.
not Buddha yet
I have an incredibly internalized locus of control, which is good and bad. It's good because while I recognize that I can't control all that happens in my life, it's up to me to decide how I want to handle it. This realization was key to me dealing with my mom's death and an asshole of a father when I felt like all control had been taken away from me. Getting over my anger and depression gave me a lot of confidence, because I had chosen to be calm and happy.
The bad is that it's hard for me to let things go, to not overthink things because I know it's up to me to fix them. I'm overly critical when things get to me, because I think I should be in control of my reaction. I guess I still haven't figured out that you can't control your reactions or your feelings, only what you choose to do with them. Lately, I feel like I've lost my calm center, and I can't seem to get it all in balance again. I'm not sure I'll be able to until classes are over. I used to be so good at compartmentalization. I miss it.
I wish I could do the goldfish thing...it would useful.
Sweet (and some technical help)
Glad to hear that you are figuring out what it takes for you to be happy. I also believe that having a short memory (about the bad stuff at least) is a great way to being happy in life; sometimes it is just best to let things roll off you, rather than dwelling on it forever, when there is really nothing you can do about it. So go goldfishes!
Regarding your greater than/less than signs in html: <, >