Are You Happy?
[caption id=“attachment_1331” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”]
a happy cat[/caption] It’s been a while since I’ve written. That seven word sentence says so much more than it seems. I haven’t written in this blog since October. Other sites I write for have languished even longer. This would be fine if I could say I was working on other things. But I can’t even say that. I finished working on my RWD videos in early fall and then the world fell in on me. I can’t even say what, if anything, happened. Mostly because nothing happened. Nothing. Happened.
I Gave up Facebook
I think I stopped regularly reading Facebook in late August, but it might have been September. I forget. In a lot of ways this was a very good thing. My stress went down. My FOMO went non-existent. And my anger at politics disappeared. It seems, when I don’t follow politics they don’t piss me off as much. Good to know! Then on December 16th I decided to check in, see what was going on, wish my peeps a happy holidays, etc. And I discovered something I’d suspected before but now have fully confirmed. If you don’t do Facebook you don’t exist. I suppose if I had a job I drove to every day and participated in discussions about television shows and what the boss said yesterday, I might exist to those people. But since I don’t, I don’t. At first my lack of existence bothered me. “I thought these people were my friends!” I thought. And “I could die and no one would notice.” Which I know objectively isn’t true, but it still felt like that when no one seemed to even realize I hadn’t been around. But then I realized that ultimately, I didn’t care. There are two people on Facebook who still reach out to me. One is a childhood friend who I’ve known since we were around six. The other is a new friend I’ve only met in person twice. But she is closer to me in many ways than some of the people I see all the time. What’s funny to me is that last year at this time I was very lonely. I felt like I had no friends and nothing interesting to do. And at the time I was Facebooking like mad and did like seven different jobs and 10 different hobbies daily. This year, I have two jobs (the chapter is nearly ready, Mark. I swear!!) and my only real hobbies are Pokemon Go and convincing my child to step away from the computer. Oh and reading. I still read a lot. And I’m not lonely.
I was Surprised by Being Happy
I was writing in my journal the other day and I realized that I feel happy. Possibly for the first time in several months, but I do. What changed? Nothing, as far as I can tell. I was just happy. Part of me doesn’t want to jinx it by examining it. So I’m going to leave it at that. I may not exist, as far as my “friends” on Facebook are concerned. But I exist for myself and I exist for my son and husband. And I exist for my dogs and cats and horse and goats. I exist and I’m happy that I exist. And I’ve gotta go catch a vulpix, they won’t evolve into ninetails on their own, after all.