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I have been following Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog for about a year now and just recently read the book, “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“. I REALLY enjoyed the book. I enjoyed it so much that I have been following people around, reading the notes I took from it.

Here is Gretchen on the Today Show talking about the project and the book. I love what she says about mindfulness being one of the keys to being happier. It has inspired me to pay closer attention to each day instead of putting so much focus on the future and checking off goals.

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1. A thousand lanterns, 2. Tea for two….no…Tangerine for two, 3. Old memories are like old memories, 4. The only one who does know truth.

This year I turned 35. I know that isn’t really old. In fact, most of my 30’s have been the best years of my life were I was starting to feel pretty comfortable in my own skin. But then I turned 35 and, unexpectedly, I started looking pretty critically at myself. I started asking the hard questions like are you really happy and do you feel good about where you are in life? I guess I have fallen into some ruts and they no longer serve me. I haven’t done a very good job of taking care of myself either and I’m starting to feel it.

This year I became more aware of the little body aches and pains and how tired I always feel. I have noticed that I have lost interest in a lot of my hobbies that used to fuel me and my creativity. As a matter of fact, I haven’t felt very creative at all. I find I’m spending more time sitting and reading about doing rather than actually doing myself. I’m stuck.

For all of these reasons, I am declaring 2010 a year of playing and discovery. Yep, I’m going back to the playground. I’m going to have fun. I’m going to read books that I may have never picked up. I’m going to try things I may not have an interest in. I’m going to listen to the other side a little more.

I’m going to exercise my body and mind and not judge whether it was a success or failure. I’m going to play around with the kind of foods I eat and actually enjoy eating rather than counting calories or feeling guilty when I choose something that is less than perfect. I’m flirting with the idea of a vegan diet and seeing how I feel.

I’m ready for a challenge. I’m ready to stretch and grow. I’m ready to dive into a new year. 2009 had some wonderful high points and I’m grateful for them but I think I’m ready to mix things up a bit. I’m looking forward to 2010. I think we are going to do great things together.

December 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

Almost a year and half ago I created a list of things I want to do in this life and on that list was to travel to Fairbanks Alaska to see the Northern Lights. I have already written about this trip in this Best of 2009 series but I think it definitely fits in this topic as well.

This trip was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I have done in my life. This trip taught me that I can accomplish anything I want if I break it down into achievable steps and took it little by little.

First, I had to convince myself that it was fine to ask for a month off work and to let some freelance clients know that I wouldn’t be available then. I didn’t know how much I needed that month until I was in the second week and realized that it took that long for me to get use to not checking email and thinking about working or feeling guilty that I might need to do something. It is so easy now to be connected all the time and sometimes it takes going to a remote area with no service to see how nice it is to unplug for a while.

Second, we had to save for the trip and we learned how to change our priorities so that we could do this. We sold one of our cars and bought an older model that we could pay cash for so that we wouldn’t have the car payment. We ate at home more and stopped spending money on things we didn’t really need. Everything was focused on our goal of this trip and we made it happen. This was huge for us.

Finally, we left home with a very basic outline of what we wanted to accomplish and the rest was completely flexible. We had no reservations and had nothing booked. We started driving each day with a general plan and there were many days those plans changed and we went with that. It was freeing and exciting and it pushed my comfort zones to the limits some days, especially when we were driving along the Alaskan highway and were not sure if we had enough gas to get to the next gas station and we had not seen another car in an hour or so… oh and big bears live there.

I thought this trip would be the trip of a life time but that suggests that we will never make a similar trip again and I don’t think that is the case at all. If anything, it has made us want to travel more and it has empowered us to think that we can go anywhere we want. We just have to think and will it into existence. It also makes me realize that those other things on my life list are ready to be checked off as well. I just need to get a plan together and make them happen. I also need to revisit that list and tweak it and add some more.

I did make it to Fairbanks but I didn’t see the Northern Lights but that is OK. I guess I will just have to plan another trip up North. We need to see what is going on in the arctic circle anyway, because we can.

December 8 Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?

I am an introvert and peace and quiet is a must for me. Occasionally I have to pull the shades and walk around in my own little world. I can go an entire weekend without talking to another human. I have been doing this my whole life. It is how I energize myself.

Therefore, I was having a hard time pulling out one moment that stood out more than others. There was that great yoga retreat in North Carolina led by my awesome yoga teacher Sharon that had several blissfully peaceful moments. There are the many walks in the woods that I have taken through the years with my camera. There is something peaceful about examining and breaking down your surroundings looking for a great composition.

And then it hit me, the moments I spent fishing with my dad when I was a little girl. Those morning rides up the lake were I would hum along with the boat motor. The early fog drifting around us as we glided across the water. The quiet lapping of the water when he cut off the motor and we started moving slowly along the bank and through the dead trees looking for the perfect spot. We sat in silence, trying not to scare the fish away, and then there would be a tiny splash behind us as a fish jumped out of the water. Sometimes we caught some and sometimes we didn’t. I don’t really remember that part as much as I can still feel the sun on my skin as it broke through the fog, the smell of the pine trees on the bank and the great happiness I felt in spending the day with my dear ol’ dad.

I wouldn’t take anything for those memories of the trips to the lake and the hours spent watching a float bobbing on the top of the water, waiting on the big trophy fish to bite and not being disappointed when it didn’t.

December 7: Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can’t believe you didn’t know about until this year.

I follow a lot of blogs that cover everything from web design and development to arts and crafts, psychology and human development to interior design and green living but here are a few of my favorites.

1. re-nest: Abundant Design for Green Homes (http://www.re-nest.com/)
   This blog belongs to the Apartment Therapy network and is filled with wonderful style and beauty. I could move into this blog and live there if that were possible. It is a nice place to visit, sip my coffee and dream a little.
2. noupe: curiosity for finding what’s new & better (http://www.noupe.com/)
   This blog focuses on design, from product packages to photography and more. I have found several great articles that inspire me in my own work. I often return to these articles for techniques and suggestions as well. If you are a designer or just enjoy looking at great design, then check out this blog!
3. grinding (http://grinding.be/)
   This blog makes me think about all the things that are possible in our world today and the amazing experiments that are happening out there. It is part sci-fi mixed with real world projects that are changing lives or have the ability to do that one day in the future. Technology fascinates me and there is plenty here for me to be fascinated about!

This year was the second year that I got to attend SXSW and I found it just as motivating this year as last. Both years I have returned excited and busting with ideas. There are so many talented people in the interactive, film and music industries and getting them in one place to share that talent is powerful stuff.

I truly believe what I learned there helped me to be better at my job. For example, I sat through a session on  “Presenting Straight to the Brain” presented by Jared Goralnick – AwayFind, Cliff Atkinson – BBP Media, Craig Ball – Craig D Ball PC and Kathy Sierra – CreatingPassionateUsers. They discussed how the human mind learns, what research says about our brains and what we can do to get the attention of our users and help them retain the most important information we are presenting. My coworker and I had a presentation to give just a few months after I returned from SXSW and we used the techniques and suggestions discussed in the session and got wonderful feedback from the attendees on how relevant it was and what great information they took away from it. The interesting thing was the techniques they proposed and the things they felt you should avoid were the opposite, in many ways, from what we were currently doing.

I’m already signed up to attend in 2010 and I can’t wait.

I once had a friend tell me that I am a “book snacker” and he is right. I used to sit down and read a book entirely and then the internet came along and I got all my information in bite size chunks while also checking twits and status updates and all those other numerous attention grabbers. I would like to say this has been positive, and in some ways in may be, but I have missed the ability to lose myself in another world and let everything else go. I have currently started reading no less than 5 books and I have a stack of others that wink at me suggestively to pick them up and see what wonderful information they are hiding between their covers. One of my goals for 2010 is to start reading more books from cover to cover and to really digest them and less skimming of many books at once.

One of the books I have started this year and have really loved so far, although I have not finished it, is Pema Chodron’s Taking the Leap.

I have read over half of this little book (it is only a little over 100 pages) and already it has been wonderful in helping me to be more aware of my habits and fears that ultimately cause me to limit what I think I am capable of. Fear has always been a paralyzing thing for me. I can talk myself in giving up before I even try if I think there is a chance that I will fail what I’m setting out to do. I often run from negative feelings, like sadness and anger, and this book made me realize that those things are no worse or better than more positive feelings. They are simply energies that I need to examine and ride out rather than react in my usual unproductive, negative way. I’m looking forward to diving back into this book.

I love the blog challenge from Gwen Bell to blog about your “bests” of 2009. I’m a little late in starting the new blog post for each day in December but I’m going to try to catch up and keep going with the new ones.

The December 1 prompt was “What was your best trip in 2009?” and mine was an easy one to pick, my road trip from Kentucky to Alaska and back to Kentucky. It was one of those amazing trips you wonder if you will ever be able to beat.

I wrote about the trip as I was traveling so I will just link back to those entries.

1. KY –> AK – Week 1
2. Fort Nelson –> Fairbanks
3. Alaska
4. Back in the states…
5. Home and beyond

You can also see my trip photos on flickr:

I found this blog tonight with some resolutions that inspired me. Below are a few of my favorites. What are your resolutions?