"Do more of...."

 There's a saying, "Do more of what makes you happy" and I think I need to focus on that.

It's been a difficult few days, between hearing all kinds of concerning stuff about how AI may change how we all live (and for the worse, it seems), and the school shooting, and unrest elsewhere, and just general a rising tide of incivility (or so it seems)

And all these things? I can do Sweet Fanny Adams about ANY of them. One thing that's distressed me in the past couple years is the realization that I actually have very little agency in this world: I don't make things happen; things happen to me - the pandemic, all the unpleasantness people get up to, before that the budget cuts of 2016. I'm honestly mostly just buffeted around by what happens.

Maybe everyone is. Maybe most people other than the richest and most powerful are. 

So maybe I need to make a list of what makes me happy. Mostly these are pathetically small things, but whatever.

1. Working on the quilt top Sunday made me happy, as did knitting on one of the current sweaters last night. I am wondering if some of my distress is I have less time and energy to do things like this than I once did. 

2. Most of the time - playing in the bell choir makes me happy. (Last Sunday, not as much - I had a sinus headache and that made it less enjoyable. Playing the piano, provided I'm not over tired to the point I make mistakes and get frustrated.

3. Being able to get out to different places and spend a little time in small shops with interested owners who have neat stuff. (Maybe not so much in big-box stores: I had a bad experience at Ulta this weekend where I needed help - a product I used had been discontinued and I needed a replacement. I couldn't find a single employee not working a cash register. I THINK I saw them bunched up, talking, but at that point I figured walking over and asking for help might get me eye-rolled at: I am already a little intimidated going in there as I'm older than the typical age group they cater to, and I have NEVER believed myself "beautiful" and so I feel a bit of an imposter going in there (painting a mud fence and all that) and it's hard for me not to feel intimidated. In the end I found something on my own, it might be OK, it might not, but I guess you take what you get some times)

4. I took my ecology class out for a tree identification lab. Most of the tree species they'll see next week for the field sampling have a representative on campus, so they can learn them both from those and from the herbarium sheets. I'm good at plant identification and I know some of the tricks to remember things (and also can tell them the relationships between the different species) and for as long as that lasts (until, once again, AI totally replaces the human factor here), it's something I'm good at that not everyone can do.

And it is just good to get outside some times. I need to do that more but this semester has just been so busy.

There are other things, of course - but some of them have been more difficult to arrange recently.