This is why: I have a happy book.

Seriously, stop laughing, that’s what I call it. A few years ago, I was living abroad and missing my family and realized that I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t UNhappy, I just wasn’t actively happy.

I happened to have an empty journal at the time. I’d meant to chronicle my wild overseas adventures in it, but had totally failed at that, and I just started writing down things that made me happy. Sometimes I taped in a photograph or an image from a magazine and sometimes I wrote WHY something made me happy, or I wrote down a happy memory, etc.

Today, my happy book is almost full. Writing in the happy book doesn’t make me happy, but every now and then it is nice to take a peek when I’m not actively happy. I just open it to a random song and see a picture or read a memory and suddenly, I realize that I’m much happier than I thought.

Whatever you do, I hope it works and I hope you find your happy soon. There are few things more humbling than the realization that you’re going through the motions and letting something IMPORTANT elude you as a result.

And with that, with the best of well wishes, I’ll end this comment. Nobody likes to hear crazy talk from complete strangers, after all =)