The One With The Intro

I guess you can count this as the obligatory “welcome to my blog” post! So.. welcome! Being a writer, unpublished though I am, you might think I have lots to say about many different things… well, you’d be right (and you’d all be super lucky to hear my opinions on everything!). And though writing is a passion of mine, writing about writing… well not so much! So this won’t be a writer’s blog, at least not in the traditional sense. What I hope this blog becomes is a way to share my other passion in life… happiness. I don’t mean moments of joy or fun, but true happiness, the kind that only comes from within. Like most, I’ve striven for happiness my entire life and have found that in so many instances, happiness is a choice. It’s a way we choose to see the world despite all the ways the world lets us down over and over again. The pursuit of happiness is what inspires my writing. But I’ve found over the years, happiness is a lot like marriage or a perfect job or training for a marathon. It takes work. Sometimes lots of it and not all that work is easy. In fact, a lot of the time the work frankly sucks! But that’s what makes its pursuit so rewarding. Not because happiness can be fleeting or easily shattered by tragedy, but because there’s no feeling equal to it in existence. I’ve experienced hardships and loss. I know what it feels like to lose hope and wish away turmoil. I’ve bargained with God, prayed for miracles, grieved at the loss of a loved one, and lived with regrets of things said or done (or not done). That’s life. That’s the grand bargain we all signed up for, even if we wish it were different. It’s a ‘take it or leave it’ prospect and in the end, no one gets out unscathed. So, if that’s the bargain I’m in for, I’m all in on choosing to see the world for what it gives, not for what it takes or dishes out. For choosing happiness in the face of grief or hardship. For choosing happiness in the face of a world that doesn’t have enough of it. To me, happiness is a moral obligation we should all strive for because the happy simply make the world a better place. That doesn’t always mean it’s easy, but very few things worthwhile ever are. So you can call this “the happiness” blog. Sometimes it might be thoughtful or sad or funny or frivolous, but all with one goal, to put my small stamp of goodness and happiness out into a world that seems so divided by things that distract us from the truth of life: “happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”