Day 58: Carpe-ing All the Diems

Look, I don't think I can emphasize this enough.

If what you're doing doesn't make you happy, then stop doing it and start doing something else.

Am successfully having a great time.

I get that there are a lot of definitions for "happy."  The kind of happy I am when I know I'm doing the best I can for my kids is totally different than the kind of happy I am when I spend a night in a bar singing karaoke, and I'm not suggesting any of you walk out the door while your toddler is screaming and just go put your name in to sing Paradise By the Dashboard Light instead of dealing with your child.  Sometimes big, long term happiness takes a little bit of sacrifice in the short term.  I understand.  I'm not talking about that.

Still having a great time, slightly different context.

I'm talking about always planning for that vacation you're going to take "someday.  Maybe next year."  

Like this vacation.  This one right here.

I'm talking about wanting to spend more time with your family or friends, but "oh, not this week.  I'm really swamped next week, too.  Call me after that?  I promise we'll get together then."

Or now.  You could just do it now.

I'm talking about wishing you'd gone sailing, or ridden in a hot air balloon, but "no.  That's silly.  I don't need to do that.  Let's just go to a movie or something."

Okay, this is actually a movie, but Fuzzy and I don't get to do that often, so it's fun for us!

I know that sometimes it's about money.  I know that sometimes it's about time.  But sometimes it's really just about being brave enough, and deciding your life is worth actually living.  That you have these finite hours to do with as you will, and you can choose to spend them doing what actually satisfies you, or you can squander them on routine, and inertia, and stagnation.

Better to drown going to see the pandas than never see the pandas at all.

Last year Been was in the hospital, and, as Coury puts it "she kept trying to die on us."  She didn't, which I'm terribly grateful for, and I wish she'd never been ill, but I guess something about it lit a fire under my ass.  I don't have that much time on this earth, and a fair chunk of it is going towards making sure my part of the next generation aren't giant assholes.  Whatever other hours I have in any given day are going to be spent on things that make me happy.  

No matter how ridiculous it is.

There just doesn't seem to be a point to living any other way.