The Simple Things

It really is the simple things that make life worth living and fun. Sure, backpacking in the Andes is going to be a grand time and something you'll talk about forever but what really creates a consistently "good" (quotation marks is indicative of subjectivity) life are those teeny tiny daily moments you aren't sure anyone other than you thinks are wonderful. For instance, the inspiration of this post was that I just sent an email entitled "Running and Sociopaths", which cracked myself up. And I have many moments like this which I hadn't realized were so fulfilling until today. But I believe that that my friend is the secret to true happiness and fun in life.

Parallel Parking

I love to parallel park. I have no idea why. I can't even remember learning to do it. But somehow I am AMAZING at it. I think it's super fun. I get excited every time I see an open spot that I have to get into without just pulling straight in. Parallel parking is just one of the strange things I find fun that probably a lot of others don't. What things do you enjoy doing that the average person would avoid at all costs?

New Vantage Point

I've spent much of grad school round dos frustrated and not having a lot of fun. At least with the school part. I went round and round trying to figure out how I could get more out of it to no avail. Until this week. Thanks to some staunch supporters who both kicked me in the butt and gave me loving support I came to a realization. One I already knew but apparently hadn't entirely understood. Disappointment (and thus no fun) comes from having expectations that aren't met. I had gone into my program expecting it to be a great intellectual/academic challenge and so far, haven't found that to be the case. What I hadn't expected was it to be so emotionally challenging. That it would challenge me in ways I wasn't prepared for and up until now didn't want. That I have skill deficits that this program is bringing to light and forcing me to deal with. For that I am now quite thankful and excited. Because I'm sure this is what I need more than an academic challenge to reach my future goals. And perhaps that new perspective will lead to what I had originally expected as well. So this is scientific evidence people of the importance of being mindful and letting go of expectations in terms of complete life enjoyment. It's necessary to find the silver lining in all challenging situations. My situation hasn't changed one single bit but because I'm looking at it differently and have found the importance of it to me it's becoming much more fun.

Duh Moment

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to fun but I had a good laugh so thought I'd share. Literal quote from an article I'm reading called Integrating Family Resilience and Family Stress Theory: "These variations in functioning following risk exposure are similar to Hill's (1958) roller coaster model of family stress when he proposed that stressed families return to a level of functioning at, below, or above their precrisis level." I'm not sure who this Mr. Hill is but he sure is a funny man. I could be wrong since I have yet to publish anything in any significant academic journal but I would assume that a person's level of function in any given moment would be at, below, or above their previous level of functioning and so on for the rest of their lives. But perhaps I should conduct some research on that.

Vanity Plates

I'm not a big fan of vanity plates but plenty of other people think they're fun since I see them everywhere. But I did see one today that made me laugh. "DR 007"(unfortunately I couldn't click and drive so this was the closest pic I could find to it). I forgot to look at the type of car but I'm judging the owner to have a slight ego. Love it!

Fun Buster: Reading for Class

Tonight I'm experiencing a fun buster. I need to read for my classes and I don't want to. And I usually like to read. Pretty much anything. And a lot of stuff for my grad school program is interesting to me. But there are so many more fun things I want to do right now. Like go to the movies. Or a moonlit stroll because it's finally warm again. Or grab a drink (even though I really don't want to drink). Or paint art to hang on my bedroom wall which is currently a depression of bareness. Or anything with the bf. Or hang upside down on monkey bars. Or even cleaning is seeming more appealing right now.

I don't know if this is because I started with the worst article ever about support systems for parents. Surprisingly all studies of parental support systems indicate that parents are better at parenting when they have social support systems. Imagine that! Now for the longest time I've wanted to be an academic and I love asking questions and finding answers. However, when the answer is an obvious one why the need for so much research to support what everyone already knows?! This is one of the reasons I question whether that's actually the right career path for me. I have no desire to be Captain Obvious.

And I thought about simply not reading. I did that last semester and it worked out quite well for me. But this semester the reading accountability level seems to have been upped (probably due to my way too honest assessment of the classes). So I'm thinking reading would be a good idea. Plus it would probably be helpful to have the knowledge. Then, I still continue to debate myself, but is there a such thing as too much knowledge? Maybe I'm experiencing knowledge overload? So that is my fun buster. And blogging is another fun way to continue to postpone what I've already postponed this entire weekend.

Bubble Wrap

So simple. So not what it's supposed to be used for. So satisfying. I think the single most effective cure for stress is popping bubble wrap. And my fav part of it is just when you think you've popped all you can pop you find some you haven't and the fun continues. I wonder if we could find world peace by sending every single human being a piece of bubble wrap?