Life and happiness. (Yeah, it's an ambitious title)

Posting to my blog via email doesn't seem to be working lately. Let's
see if this one takes...

Oh - thanks for all the lovely remarks on my last post. Graduation day
is 23rd March.

Contrary to popular belief, I *am* still here, still reading all your
blogs on a daily basis, still following your lives and your stories
the same way an avid Bold and the Beautiful fan follows the lives of
Ridge, Brooke and co.

Life has been fine. It's alright. Whatever Quarter-Life Crisis I
started experiencing when I was 25 is still with me, and now seems to
have spread to my husband and some of his friends.

They're all angsty - like adolescent boys. Confused about where they
are and what they're doing with their lives.

One of the exercises recommended when you can't seem to work out what
you want to do with your life, is to look at your strengths and figure
out what you need to do to be happy and good at what you're doing.

I'm a classic timewaster (aren't most bloggers?) So in order to
continue on that "journey to self-discovery" that most teens, quarter,
and mid-life crisis people seem to be on, I am currently timewasting
by doing those validated personality questionnaires on
www.authentichappiness.org

So far, on the Signature Strengths questionnaire, the results for my
Top Five strengths (out of a list of 24) are:

Your Top Strength
Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You
have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere
there is an opportunity to learn.

Your Second Strength
Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and
you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and
discovery.

Your Third Strength
Capacity to love and be loved
You value close relations with others, in particular those in which
sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most
close are the same people who feel most close to you.
Your Fourth Strength
Hope, optimism, and future-mindedness
You expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You
believe that the future is something that you can control.
Your Fifth Strength
Appreciation of beauty and excellence
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled
performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics
to science to everyday experience.

Yeah, I suppose that's me.
How that's supposed to help me figure out what I want from life, I dunno! lol

I'm curious to see how Hubby scores.

Yep, I'm rambling on here. I'm starting to feel okay again these days,
which is great. But now that I'm alright, Hubby's really down. And I
can't be happy unless he's happy.

I guess what makes us both happy are the precious things - spending
time with each other and with family and friends, sharing meals,
spending time in the garden, going on our little outings (tonight
we're heading to the ABC studios to be in the audience for a pilot of
a new variety show). So if those things make us happy, and we do those
things all the time, what's tipping the balance? What's stopping us
from being happy?

Hubby wants to be more involved with the local community. His idea of
a good life is knowing everyone on our street by name, walking down to
the local shops and being greeted by the shopkeepers who know just
what he wants, helping out people in our area. Those things are
achievable - we live in a "villagey-feeling" suburb. Maybe at the
moment we're a bit isolated and he feels he can't get there.

He wants to be good at his job. No - he wants to be great at it. He
had such high expectations for himself when I first met him, and it
really seems like he's losing that confidence as the years go by. He
was running his own small business back in England and it was doing
well, but he gave that up for me. And everytime he thinks of starting
of setting up his own business again, things happen - he became
unwell, our financial responsibilties multiplied a billion times - it
just hasn't happened for him. I can't help but feel some guilt about
that.

Maybe there's been too much change for him (two new jobs, buying a
house, loads of financial stress, being diagnosed with cancer - all in
the last 16 months).

But it's not like we're stuck, and we are moving in the right direction.

As we were saying this morning, life's just going to get more and more
complicated for us as time goes by - that's just how it goes.
Responsibilities mount, more losses occur. But it's not all bad. We've
grown up a lot over the last year. I think I've developed more
compassion for others. I think he's seen how strong he can be. Those
things can be good things.

I guess what I'm saying is that we need to treat this year (what's
left of it - it's freaking March already!) as time in which we
recover. To make the most of our time. Appreciate what we have.

Oh, I sound like a walking cliche!
Call it late afternoon delirium. Maybe I'll get my head around my
thoughts better another day...