What a great surprise!

I logged onto my computer this morning, and noticed that I had a comment on my last post. As it turns out, Gretchen Rubin, the author of "The Happiness Project," wrote to me, saying that it was nice to see the positive things I had written about her book! Oh my goodness, I can't believe it! That is so incredible, especially for someone relatively new to blogging, I never expected anything like that to happen! My sister already bought the book and my mom is getting it too. I would have lent them my copy like we usually do, but since mine is on my Kindle, they have to get their own. :)We did the same thing when we read Eat, Pray, Love. It's always fun to share good books.
So, to give an update on my own "Happiness Project."
1. I did get the pedometer from my sister and walked twice this past week, each time I walked about 7,000 steps. Clearly there's a lot of room for improvement there, considering my goal is to walk 10,000 steps each day. But I have plans to walk today, and am going to make it a priority to walk every day this next week. In addition, I am going to incorporate at least one other class this week, and swim at least once or twice. The other class will be yoga, zumba or weights. I want to get a weekly routine down that I really stick to.
2. Clutter is still haunting me to some degree, but I have been making some progress. I donated two huge bags of clothes, and still need to donate more. I cleaned up my office area, but the area instantly became cluttered again due to several shipments of student books and materials. Although I've been delivering the materials as they come, as soon as I deliver some, I get more, so the boxes are a bit of a problem. I am working on finding a solution to this. I may just start putting the boxes in my trunk so they are ready for delivery.
3. Pursuing my creative endeavors: the first thing I did was start blogging again, and then I get a message from none other than Gretchen Rubin, the writer that inspired me to make these changes! If that's not a good sign, then I don't know what is! I've also been in touch with a friend of my mother's, Diane Covington, who is giving me guidance on getting back into writing. She said that Rob and I should join BATW, which stands for Bay Area Travel Writers, but first we need 4 recently published pieces. We have 4 so far, but not all would qualify as travel pieces, so we are working on that. I think we are going to review Orphan, the new breakfast place, and finally do our piece on OneSpeed as well. Since we'll be moving to Monterey in June, I'm sure we'll be inspired to do a lot more writing, with so many new places to discover and explore.
4. Making more of an effort at being a better communicator, and being a better friend. With work, my standard is that I return all emails and phone calls within 24 hours. Why is it so hard to do that in my personal life? After all, my friends matter more to me than work connections. However, I have decided that I will make every effort to return phone calls and emails within 24 hours and already, it is paying off. I am reconnecting with old friends, and feeling more connected to people. I feel very happy about this.
5. Showing gratitude. I'm not sure I included this in my last post, but I have a goal to write out gratitudes every day and tell at least one person what I love about them, or what I am grateful for about having them in my life. This may be in the form of a letter, an email, a phone call, or a face-to-face conversation, but either way, I am determined to do this.
6. Don't give up. I'm not sure that this was a focal point of my last post either, but I have made a difficult self-observation: I give up too easily. I gave up on my hula classes, which I absolutely loved, but the schedule was becoming too demanding. I have given up on countless diets and exercise routines. I have been giving up on things for too long. Now I see that there's a huge price to pay for giving up things you a) love or b) need to do. So I am making an effort to hang in there, and stick around to reap the rewards of not giving up on something, even when the going gets tough.
7. Drinking tea instead of coffee. This might be petty thing, but coffee has been incredibly hard to give up. However, I just feel better drinking tea instead. I don't get quite the energy boost from tea that I get from coffee, but I feel more calm, clear thinking, and my long term daylong energy is more evenly distributed instead of a huge energy boost, then a huge crash.
I still have many more "projects" to work on, but I feel inspired that I am off to a great start!
Yours truly,
Jeneka