happiness project: monthly breakdown

arabia – 11 jan 2016

Back in April of 2011, I read The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin and was inspired to start my own Happiness Project. Since then, life has gotten in the way, and I’ve stopped and restarted multiple times, such as in April 2013 Happiness Project once again.

Finally in November 2013, I took a solo camping trip in Evie, caught up on nagging tasks, and mapped out an even more complete project for myself. What are the things I need to do? What are the things I want to do? What needs to be maintained? What can be simplified? What needs to be organized? Once I got all that down, I was ready to get started once again on my all-encompassing Happiness Project.

And, with some tweaks as I finished up old topics and added new ones, here’s the breakdown I cam up with:

Jan: Friends/Family/Social Networks
Feb: Appearance
Mar: House
Apr: Cooking/Creations
May: Volunteer
Jun: Blogs
Jul: Career
Aug: Exercise
Sep: Learn
Oct: Travels
Nov: Files/Finances
Dec: Health/Self-care

I suspect these might morph again, but it works for now. While I *really* work on every topic every month, I concentrate on the topic in its given month. I do the big projects, re-think what needs to be done for the topic, make plans. I’ve been at it for almost two years now, and I love how organized I feel – everything has its time and place, so I don’t get (as) overwhelmed.