Whew

One of conservative talk radio's greatest hidden treasures is Dennis Prager's weekly "Happiness Hour" (which, come to think of it, should be either starting or finishing any minute here).

There've been two such shows in the past year that have had a huge impact on me. The first - probably back around last New Years - reiterated a lesson I'd known for years in another context. There's an old Hungarian saying; "the best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are". Of course, you can substitute many words for "wealthy"; the best piece of advice I ever heard Laura Schlesinger give was a permutation; "the best way to recover your love for someone is to act as if you do, anyway". But of course, it was Prager who closed the loop; "the best way to become happy is to act, live and just be happy". It's true; there are benefits, tangible and non, to keeping a good attitude, to leaving a space in your life for the thing you want - happiness, love, health, whatever - and finding or achieving it. On the other hand, acting disenchanted, poor, miserable and unhappy can all become self-fulfilling acts. So I've made a conscious effort over this past year to just be a lot of things I want to be. It's made a huge difference (except for trying to will myself to be better-looking; I'm looking for progress, not miracles).

Prager's other lesson from the past year that hit me where I live; "Becoming Happy is hard work".

Boy, did he get that one right.

I don't have a lot to complain about, really - but there are some things in my life that were making me pretty unhappy; my house has been a cluttered mess most of the past year (largely a result of having been very sick last winter, combined with having a puppy in the house; a lousy combination at best) and a financial situation that's been chaotic for the past couple of years. Not "bad", per se - just chaotic. While I thive on chaos in many areas of my life - work, creativity, the day to day give and take of life - money is not one of them. Knowing what I have and where it's going is something that makes me feel a lot better - and something I've not had for quite a while, certainly since the miserable year of '03, when I spent five months out of work and five more terribly underemployed, and knowing "where my money was at" was superfluous, since I had none.

I'm not a creature of routine - but one of few routines in my life is getting up around 5AM to write this blog. But for the last month or so, the ritual's been crowded by another one; getting up, entering my receipts and downloading my bank transactions in Quicken, comparing the spending to a budget I set up around Christmastime, and trying to get my finances more or less ship-shape.

And it's coming along, bit by bit; I've pretty much tamed my bills (everything's punched into my bank's Bill Pay site and Quicken a month in advance. I have some catching up to do, but at least I'm on track - and know what the "track" is.

But it's been hard - changing one's behavior usually is. I won't be able to "relax" until probably the summer, sometime. Of course, without this work, it'd be a lot longer...

The house, too; a weekend of crazy cleaning and fixing things up two weeks ago got a few big swathes of the house that had been nagging me more or less into shape; there's a ton to do, but things are showing some improvement...

...as is my attitude in general. Happiness is difficult. Glad I finally figured it out.