Being holed up in bed has allowed me to catch up on some reading. I am already a fast reader: I can inhale books in hours and will happily stay up all night in order to finish a book.
Yesterday I started reading Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project after hearing about how great and amazing a read it was from a variety of sources.
She documents her journey by a month-to-month basis, and I am right around the end of April. So far I am enjoying it, and appreciate the honesty of which Rubin exhibits in her writing. For my tastes, it is a little too much introspective. With each chapter, she seems to be questioning herself and her motives and wondering if she isn't being too narcissistic or too self-involved by writing this book. And for a lot of the book, I can't help but wonder if she isn't overanalyzing a bit excessively. This is something that she does address, however, in the beginning of her book.
Overall, I am finding her journey inspiring in its simplicity. She is not making sweeping life changes, but rather changing the way she reacts and handles things. Like a favorite quote of mine states: Life is 1% what happens to you and 99% how you react to it. And I think by altering the way we react to situations and to people can speak volumes about us. It is good to constantly evaluate ourselves and our behaviors, and I think that is what Rubin has done with this book.
And following in her example, I find myself also wanting to incorporate little changes in my life as well. So I have decided to embark on my own little project where I incorporate some of Rubin's ideas mixed with some of my own to construct my own Happiness Project.
For my first goal, I want to tackle something that has been haunting me for 23 years now: my love affair with clutter. I swear, junk just follows me everywhere and somehow accumulates into these huge piles that just seem too unmanageable and intimidating that I either just ignore them or move them somewhere else. Not very productive.
Rubin has devised a plan where, every night before she goes to bed, she will do some light cleaning for ten minutes. Simple, right? And definitely something I want to incorporate.
I think it will be something that will become a process, though. Especially because ever since I started dating Pedro, I would spend sometimes 7 nights a week at his place. This would involve me packing a small bag of clothes, staying at Pedro's , leaving for work the next day from his place and throwing all my clothes in my bag, coming home from work to my house where I would shower, dump out my old clothes and back a new bag and repeat for a whole week. This is not very conducive to cleanliness.
I think once I start my new job next week, and I will have to spend Monday-Friday sleeping at my place, I will be able to tackle this goal more efficiently. Organization and a clutter free life are things I desperately want- but I do need to work for them. So here I go with my first Happiness Project goal: declutter my life!
