As part of the anxiety-battling agenda, I’m substituting the list of things I have to do with a list of things that make me happy today. At the end of the semester (or the calendar year), many people’s anxieties flare up. We are all constantly on a schedule, afraid we won’t be able to do all we need to do, and the avitaminosis kicks in at about this time, making everybody loopy and irritable.
So here are things that make me happy today:
1. We’ve got our first snow of the season! I love snow. I wish I could live surrounded by huge snow mounds all the time.
2. Our departmental meeting that was scheduled for Friday has been cancelled. I feel like a bad student who celebrates each class cancellation.
3. I’ve been asked to serve as a translator for the preface of the new book by my favorite Spanish philosopher. My name will appear right under his, which is huge for me.
4. I’ve just emerged from a very important committee where I managed to push through some very significant initiatives. I didn’t let senior colleagues intimidate me and achieved exactly what I wanted.
5. N is at his new job right now. He is probably playing table tennis during his lunch break. That’s one cool company if it provides table tennis (and also fresh fruit) to workers.
What makes you happy today?
P.S. I don’t want people to accuse me of bragging again, so maybe I need to show everybody how every point on this list can be used as an anxiety producing device?
Snow – the heating bill will go through the roof, and I need new boots => indigence, poverty, horror!
Translation of the philosopher’s preface – what if I fail and make an idiot out of myself? What if the philosopher thinks I’m stupid? => shame, humiliation, horror!
N.’s at work – what if he loses this job? What if I lose mine? => indigence, poverty, shame, humiliation, horror!
Clarissa's Blog 
Things that make me happy today:
1.) This damned paper is almost done, and I promised myself that if I finished it by today, I would reward myself with a trip to LUSH tomorrow. 🙂
2.) I’ll be home on Thursday evening, and I’m hoping I can stop at my favourite restaurant on Maui and have a bite.
3.) Someone agreed to give Jaime and I their old mattress and couch, so we’ll finally have a place to sleep and a place to sit in our new house.
4.) After I finish this essay I will get to do all of the free reading I’ve been yearning to do.
Plenty of reasons to be happy. 🙂
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I wish there was table tennis at my job! Today I am happy that the sun is shining (that’s always really helpful for me when combating anxiety) and that I just turned in my last project for the semester.
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Congratulations that is awesome about the book and the committee! Definitely something to get excited about.
I love snow too… Unfortunately my partner hates cold weather and refuses to live anywhere that has a winter lasting more than a couple weeks. 😦
I’m happy today because I’m almost done with my last research paper. I am sad though for the same reason: it is the last work I have to do for my master’s. And I’m not likely to hear back about my doctoral application until sometime in spring, according to the admissions website. So I’m kind of in limbo.
But I finally get to catch up on all the reading I’ve had to put off for two years! Can you believe I’ve never finished Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”? Can you believe anyone has ever finished Spenser’s “Faerie Queene”?
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Not that I’m not deliriously happy to finish my masters. 😀 I’m just anxiously stuck waiting to see whether I get to keep going in the fall.
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Good luck on the grad school acceptances! They’ve got to take you, seriously.
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‘Can you believe anyone has ever finished Spenser’s “Faerie Queene””
-I know somebody who never started. That ignoramus!
I’m referring to myself, of course. 🙂
“I love snow too… Unfortunately my partner hates cold weather and refuses to live anywhere that has a winter lasting more than a couple weeks.”
-Same here. I went and married a Russian on purpose, to have a snow-loving person around. But it turns out he loves the tropics and feels cold everywhere else. How unfair is that??
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“-I know somebody who never started. That ignoramus!
I’m referring to myself, of course”
No biggie. It’s tough, and unless you’re very into deeply allegorical Elizabethan courtly romance you’re probably not going to get too far.
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Congratulations on the book. (And even good students celebrate school cancellations.)
My good news came yesterday, but it’s keeping me from slacking off today:
-I have the chance to participate in research under an awesome professor.
-I was told that I’m on track to audition for a competition that mostly music majors participate in. I wouldn’t be auditioning until the spring after this coming one, though.
-I might be employed next semester! See point one for details.
-I’m on track for an A in my final paper for history.
-I might be employed next semester!
…If you can’t tell which one I’m most excited about….
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These are fantastic news! If you already get invited to participate in research with a professor that’s huge. Good luck!!
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Thanks! In my major, you have to ask about research–you only get invited if you’re a junior and doing an honors thesis or something along those lines. So it was more due to my initiative and interest in the subject matter than getting invited.
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Congrats! Translating the preface of this beloved philosopher is quite an honor. I should read him, but I have the impression I will not like his work that much.
And congrats to N. too!
What makes me happy? Going back home for 6 weeks this coming Thursday! The plan is the following: going out with my wife in restaurants, spending time with my son, cooking Quebecois dishes with a multicultural twist, visiting the many bars and cafes I like, working on ‘that’ paper, trying to read a novel ‘for fun.’ Simple things, really…
Faerie Queene: my best friend’s brother has just submitted his PhD dissertation at your alma mater. The disseration is about the many French (mis)translations of the work of Spenser. And the new doctor is kind of nuts.
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‘cooking Quebecois dishes with a multicultural twist, visiting the many bars and cafes I like”
-Yes, keep rubbing it in for those of us who don’t get to go to Montreal this holiday season. 🙂
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Hmm, schadenfreude mostly today – I have a lot more freedom at work than these particular clients do, and I am really appreciative of our flexible policies.
Also, my boyfriend bought Agricola, which is the first complex board game I have ever tried playing (beyond the basic games of Monopoly, Scrabble etc.) I managed to sit down with him and figure some of it out on Sunday night, but this weekend we can play a whole game!
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oy, it makes me happy that you share your happiness 1. to 5. 😉
and i am happy today because i e.g. prepared a multiple-servings fresh tomato-sauce from fresh to-mah-toes from the last=this years fresh sicily-italy-tomatoes *yum
and i am happy today that i own my own home and have infloor-heating and do not have to suffer from cold-feet as long as i chose to live here *yay
and i am happy today that i can get myself a cup of fresh-ground-coffee whenever-i-wish-to-have-one *hmmmm
and i am happy today that i am alive and can self-improve my mental- and physical-health as a survivor of emotional- and physical abuse *embrace
i am grateful i can feel and experience serendipity. also today.
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Yay to all of these! And especially yay to fresh tomato-sauce! 🙂
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🙂
(i am also happy i did not have to describe the preparation and cooking of a soc. old-fashioned, national, seasonal vegetable that initially looks “very ugly” and needs lots of prep-steps to become a delicious vegetable-dish – sliced and slowly simmering for in a mix of spices with white-wine, heavy-sweet-cream and a-touch-of-nutmeg 😉
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You are doing this on purpose to make me go stuff my face with food at 11 pm. That’s cruel. 🙂 🙂
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// oh-noez, i am not happy of that //
happinez is what you seez-it 😉
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My life is always very good — although I could be in Africa on various horse safaris and then my life would be better.
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I have today off!
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