The importance of happiness

A few days ago I watched a circus act. Not the bigtop, animal variety but an acrobatic busker show with ropes and a trapeze. I enjoyed it and it made me think and those two things go so well together.

I enjoyed it because it made me feel good. In my mind I was flying and tumbling and stretching and performing amazing gravity-defying feats. I am sure that lots of other people were feeling something similar because we were oohing and aahhing and gasping and cheering in unison. We weren’t conciously thinking about responding, we just were. We were feeling what we were seeing. I don’t know what other people were feeling but my body felt wonderful and I walked away feeling light and free.

I felt happy and part of a spontaneous community of happiness. I don’t know how long that experience lasted for other people, or how intensely other people experienced it, but I do know it was a good thing. I also know that lots of little good things add up and that happiness can be built by fostering happy experiences.

Our society could use a whole lot more happiness, especially communal happiness and there is absolutely no reason why we can’t make it a priority. As a teacher, I know that people learn better when they are happy (Maslow etc) but its crazy to justify the creation of a safe happy environment on the grounds that it will promote better academic results. Happiness is worthy in its own right. Learning, mental health, safe communities etc are way more likely to eventuate when happiness is valued but happiness comes first.

Back to the hobbies

This one isn’t mine. See how quickly you can work out who it is…

 

My unusual hobby

A strange obsession I share

with my parents

is the almost religious fervour

and respect I give

to the few minutes segment

of the weather forecast

at the end of the 6 pm TV One News

and it must be TV One

because TV3 no longer

gives the national temperature highs

(for the day that has been)

throughout the different centres of NZ.

For the initial few seconds

as the highs for the day

appear consecutively

up the South Island map

I quickly make my estimate

of today’s temperature,

then assess my success

when the actual number appears.

Next I wait for my city

to appear in the forecast

for tomorrow −

the trap

is that a moment’s distraction

or absent thought will cause you

to miss your centre’s forecast.

This is an opportunity for sabotage

that is traditionally seldom missed

by my now 20-something daughter

when she is around.

The closing stages

are a quick scan

on behalf of friends

who live in two Australian cities,

followed by a final fix −

the visual predictions of the weather

for the next few days in my city

and suddenly

my compulsive hobby is over −

until 24 hours later.

Two hobbies in one post

The first hobby is something I should be ashamed of…but of course I am not. It is getting other people to do things for me. Blame it on the “youngest-child syndrome”. So, here is my big sister writing about one of her hobbies.

My name is Jaybee, I am a comper. Several years ago I was started on my habit by my sister’s teenage children. They told me how they won t-shirts, CD’s etc on the internet.

I thought that it looked like fun so when my son brought a computer into our house I saw my chance .I had never used a computer before, but my son said ”just go for it”, so I did.

First I would get up early in the morning and do all the competitions I could before my son was up and about. When my son left home leaving the computer behind my habit grew, now I could use the computer anytime I wanted. The more competitions you enter the more prizes you win. People say that I am lucky, but it’s just persistence really. I now have a lap-top and broadband which allows me to enter more competitions. When I joined a competition site I learnt about lots of new competitions. Some of the local compers meet up once a month for a cuppa. Compared with me they are big time compers. I don’t save all my grocery dockets in case they are needed for competitions, I don’t search in rubbish bins and I wouldn’t sneak out at night and take a pizza box out of a neighbours re-cycling pile in order to enter a competition.

If you are wondering what I do with the prizes the answer is: find good homes for them.

Some get saved for birthdays or Christmas, which was my original intention. However most are quickly given to whoever I think needs, or would appreciate, them. Is my habit hurting anyone? I hope not. Could I quit? Maybe, if I won Lotto!

Kia Kaha

Jaybee

Vicarious travel

This, in no specific order of importance, is the third of my hobbies. I am mentioning it now because I have indulged in it rather a lot this weekend and writing about it is preferable to going out into a Christchurch morning that is grey with icy fog still at 9am. As long as I keep the curtains closed I can be somewhere other.

One of the most delightful things about vicarious travel is that there are so many ways of doing it nowadays. Letters are still good, of course, and give a vintage thrill. Putting a hand in the letterbox and finding a plump little envelope nestled among the bills and circulars. Familiar handwriting, foreign stamps, maybe a little battered and stained, that letter has been places. What next? Rip it open there and then and read it on the front lawn or take it inside and consume it slowly with a cup of coffee on the sofa? At this time of year that is a no-brainer! After that, the touch and smell of the paper….but that is another hobby and maybe I shall invite one of my special readers to write about THAT one.

Logically, we have postcards next. Another retro thrill but not as rare or endangered as the letter because postcards are one of the least demanding forms of communication. Any idiot can go into a tourist shop, or airport or convenience store even and pick up a postcard with a local image or cliche and scribble a few words in really big letters about how they are there now and bought this card for you and hope you are well and will see you soon. I suppose the purchase of stamps is an added stress but, on the other hand, postcard sellers often also sell stamps and have a handy postbox nearby. But then who am I, in the comfort of my livingroom, to know how hard it is to send a postcard in China, for example. I hope it doesn’t sound as if I don’t appreciate postcards because I do. They have their own distinctive letterbox presence, sleek and defined and cool to the touch like my new HelloMoto phone. They look good propped up against the computer screen too and that of course transitions nicely into the next paragraph.

The internet. It could be listed as a hobby by itself I suppose but I think of it as the master enabler of millions of little hobbies brewing like staphylococci and reaching out its tentacles into all the crevices of our lives. (Mixing metaphors as a hobby, ya reckin?). It is so hard to know where to start writing about the internet, isn’t it? Today the topic is vicarious travel so I will stop wandering about and map out the remainder of this post, set a course and head for journey’s end (horrible thought that, an end to the journey). There it is again, meandering, wandering in circles (is that really because we have one leg longer than the other) full of sidetracks.

Email is the one form of internet travel. The good thing about it is that it is personalised (unless the sender thinks it is like one of those appalling Xmas newsletters where acquaintances feel the need to describe their beautiful family’s achievements for the year inside a customised card they have printed out themselves on A4 paper and signed in ink with a personalised message so you feel you are not just the recipient of a Microsoft Word template). Again, a disclaimer, the occasional group email is perfectly welcome, as long as it is not the only email and the group is not too big. “Dear family” is fine when “family” means only 2 or 3 people are sharing the email that I know was actually written for me and has been copied to them too so they won’t feel left out.

Blogs can also provide vicarious experences of many kinds, including travel. I suppose the only drawback is that the writer has to sit in an internet cafe somewhere and write the thing instead of going out and experiencing the things I want to read about (not internet cafes by the way). So thank you to those of you who are not writing simply to avoid a cold Sunday morning but are nobly forgoing real experience just for me. And for those of you who haven’t posted anything for weeks on end (yes you), I know its worth waiting for because you know that I am waiting……

Another whole set of vicarious experiences has been provided by the kind people at flickr.com. Pictures can be linked to blogs or travellers can simply give their photos titles and write comments under them like a good old-fashioned photo album tranformed by modern technology into a photo travel diary. China will never look the same in my mind now that I have “Dave was here” images superimposed on those classic sites and Spain will be empty of people (other than a few crazy Basque) but full of peaceful buildings and windows and moorish arches.

Phonecalls, the best and most illicit of vicarious travel experiences. I get to hear birds singing and breakfast being prepared in the south of France, or traffic noises and raucous shouting in China. This adds another sensory layer to my images of my nearest and dearest. Talking to someone in Europe is just better somehow than talking to them in Auckland!

Time is pressing and I will just mention a few other sources of vicarious travel experiences that are available to anyone (I resort to these when I am short of emails, blogs and pictures that were created just for me). Maps, websites for towns and regions,wiki (never wrong according to Mike), STA travel website, oh, and then there are travel brochures on stands in the street and Pilot guides in bookshops, and magazine articles. I could go on, but I won’t.

I shall end with an amusing image. I have a map of the world in my head and I see Sus ricocheting around Europe like an airhockey puck. Dave, on the other hand, is a pingpong ball attached by elastic to a medium-sized town in China.

Footnote: There is a cunningly hidden message in the third paragraph

Hobby #2 Sending mail

Not all mail is worthy of hobby status because it is just too simple. Competition entries, account payments, anything that just requires a peel-off stamp from the book of 10 already tucked into the wallet, these mundane tasks do not qualify as hobbies….yet.

Now, a stack of design magazines to Botswana, that’s a challenge. Which is best a post office box or physical address? Depends on how postmen in Botswana travel I suppose (I hope some poor thin little man didn’t have to balance them on the handlebars of his bicycle) and whether anyone would want to steal design magazines. And how should they be packed? Did you know that everything goes by Air these days? Don’t suppose it’s easy to get a boat from Christchurch to Botswana anyway.

The ladies in the post office are nice. We have geeky post office conversations about how weird it is that there is so little difference between the price of the slowest and second fastest postal methods (there are only 3 rates), and about how long it takes for a standard letter to reach Madagascar. (Sending letters to Madagascar is a thrill because the names are so long it’s hard to fit everything on the envelope).

It’s lucky for David that I look forward to my post office expeditions because one of his hobbies is receiving parcels. I guess this is what is meant by co-dependence. Ironically, he hates the post office and will do pretty much anything to avoid going there. One man’s meat is another man’s poison I guess and it would be a funny old world if we were all the same, eh?

I reckon I have sent 7 parcels to David in the last 3 months and I am getting a bit worried that this hobby is getting out of hand. How often is too often? Will the nice ladies start to think that i have a problem and refuse to give me my gratification or suggest I enter a 12 step program? It’s a bit worrying because I already have contents for 2-3 more parcels waiting in the cupboard and I have visualised how I will pack them and saved up more than enough bubblewrap. You know, I am not being entirely honest, I haven’t actually mailed all those parcels myself, I have had help with some of them from lovely internet people who even remember David’s address for me and do all the packing, so if the post office ladies cut me off, I can still get my illicit postal thrill.

I received 2 parcels last week, and that was fun. Maybe if I post this blog entry I will get a postcard too!

My hobbies

The challenge has been issued. I may not do light, but I am confident I can do trivial.

Hobby #1

Buying cheap swimsuits

What distinguishes a hobby from the routines of everyday life? This was a puzzle for some time and a great difficulty when asked that horrid question, “What do you do for fun?”. Then I realised that its a rhetorical question really, so “going to movies, shopping, swimming” pretty much covers it and provides the camouflage of normality and blandness that protects single older women from witchburning.

Did you know that a regular, moderately expensive one-piece swimsuit only looks good for the first 20 swims? After 50 swims it is faded. saggy, bad for the self-esteem and a target for sniggers and sideways glances from the spa pool. Spending $100 for a swimsuit every 4 months is depressing, especially since swimsuits make us think we should look like swimsuit models and that boat sailed 30 years ago, so what’s a girl to do? Make swimsuit shopping a hobby! A hobby is something one does by choice, so how can swimsuit shopping be a hobby if one must do it?

My answer is to turn mundane everyday chores into stunning achievements by adding an element of difficulty. Anyone can fork out $100 for a nice enough swimsuit in any womenswear shop in summer, or $180 for a very nice swimsuit from a posh shop in winter but how many people can get a swimsuit in winter for $5? I am not talking about the occasional bargain bin, Postie Plus end-of -season, last-one-in-the-shop find here, though those do count as part of the whole endeavour. I am talking about being able to regularly, and reliably source cheap swimsuits at will. This is not just a hobby but a supreme life skill which takes experience, focus and acute observation. If you have no understanding of what i am saying, or appreciation of the supreme difficulty of my hobby, my guess is that you get someone else to buy your swimsuits, they are from The Farmers, and your name is David.

I am not going to demystify my hobby by telling you how I do it. All I will say is that we camouflaged middle-aged women have our secret thrills and highly developed life skills. Next time you wonder at the strange patterned, slightly weird swimsuits the answer is “Because it was cheap”, or better still “It was free”.