Monday, January 11, 2010

Happiness Day 8: Passion & Treasure

Happy Monday! Today's Mini-Happiness Project is one of my favorite themes: Pursue A Passion. I love this kind of big-dream stuff, but (confession) I'm not always good at translating it into tangible results. And on the other end of the spectrum, I know that for some folks the whole idea of "what is my passion?" can be daunting because it's so impractical. I met a very cool woman last week who described how she's never been much of a dreamer. "When things happen in my life," she said, "it's more from me being discontent with the present than from my having a big dream for the future." It reminded me--again--how differently we're all wired; how part of any happiness project is figuring out how we work (even if it looks different from every other person we know).

Gretchen offers a great question to suss out our passions: "What do you CHOOSE to do when you have a chunk of free time?" She describes something that totally hit home for me: how she'd love to be someone who is really outdoorsy and adventurous...but the ideal Saturday morning for her is when she and her family are all inside in their pajamas, reading.

From this realization, she pursued book-related passions for a month. My favorite is that she learned online publishing technology, and made books of some things important to her: her daughter's baby book, a collection of quotes, etc. I love this! The HIT of Christmas this year for our family were photo collections Steve put together using a new program on his MacBook. They came out beautifully, and it's pretty amazing to have something so tangible to hold in your hand, about something you really care about. (Passion + Tangible Product = Jolt of Happiness) So...

Have you guys seen the ad on Blogger offering to make a book of our blog posts? How cool is that? My plan for today is to explore that. I don't think anyone else would be thrilled to have a printed collection of my blog posts from the past 3 years. But I would treasure it. And my theory is that anytime you can pick up a treasure for $30 or so, you should do it :)

How about you: Do you know your passion? Is there something tangible you can do to pursue it (you know, like a treasure)?

3 comments:

MaNiC MoMMy™ said...

My passion--writing. Do I fufill it? Not the way I want to. I wish I could.

BTW, you've unfollowed me again. I may start taking this personally! ; )

Dying to hear what your good news is! xo

larramiefg said...

One of my passions is curiosity, so what IS your good news?!

millie kate said...

I TOTALLY had that blog book idea last year before blogger!! I'm thinking about journaling out by hand my blog on my 2-year mission assignment in Japan. I want to include the actual photos, so it'd be like a scrapbook of sorts.