In Pursuit of Wants

The second chapter of IPOH was much more difficult for me than the first chapter was. One of the things I had to continuously remind myself of was written in big bold letters across the 57th page. “Remember: We meet our needs through activities we do with ourselves and other people, not through products.” Most of my wants seemed to be different things. I realized that time seemed to be a major component of most of my wants. I’m going to stop myself here; before I jump too far into what I took from this chapter.

I will start with the first exercise from this chapter; identifying what I have that makes my life happier.

From Myself:
- I have a nice townhome in Virginia that I share with Myrna, my fiancée.
- I am a student. It feels amazing to study full time again after being in the Army.
- Both Myrna and I have been learning to cook better.

From Others:
- Myrna loves me. Just that thought makes me happy.
- I have a very supportive family.
- I have some life-long friends that I left the Army with. We support each other with the troubles of trying to start a life outside of the military.
- The Veterans Administration, which has been providing me with health coverage as well as money for education.

I feel I made the right decision when I was 18 years old, and enlisted in the Army. It was obviously a rough, painful few years, but I don’t think I would be the person I am today without it. On top of the personal growth brought on from service, the benefits and rewards provided to service members has been invaluable.

This decision showed that I had a willingness to sacrifice my immediate college-bound, relatively safe future for service to the nation that provided that security. Although I didn’t have everything thought out that well at the time.

After reading through more of IPOH I wrote out a list of all of my wants that come to mind. This is where I began to notice the theme of time across my wants. I placed time within the Freedom need, although it does fit into Power too.
Using the abbreviations: L- Love, P- Power, F- Fun, FR- Freedom
FR- A car for Myrna, with infinite gas mileage
FR- A dishwasher
FR- A closer VA hospital (it takes about an hour to get there and back.
P,FR- A part time, first shift job.

With the exception of the job, everything falls back to the desire for more time. However, the desire for a job will take up even more time. I’m fairly sure that I’m not stretching myself too thin. Instead, I’ve realized that what I actually need is better time management. If I paid closer attention to how I was spending time, I wouldn’t be having due dates sneak up on me, and last minute, household emergencies wouldn’t be able to cause as much problems as they do. By managing my time better I would be able to fulfill my need for freedom, power, as well as open more time for fun.

The Intro to Happiness

“If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.” This quote from W. B. Wolfe on the second page of the book sums up what I took from the introduction quite nicely.

The introduction served as a good reminder that happiness is created out of the sum of what is happening within my life. Equally important, a lack of happiness can often be traced back to a set of choices that I am making poorly, or not making at all.

After reading both the introduction and the first chapter I decided to put what I had read into practice. I had been having some nagging frustrations over the past few days that have been negatively affecting my happiness. It only took me a few moments to pinpoint what was bothering me. I had been lethargic about cleaning up the last few days, and the house was starting to show it, and my fiancée and I had been grating on each other over the past few days. After some consideration, I concluded that the issue between us was that we were both so busy the last few days that she was lacking her physical need for sleep, and we were both missing out on fun and freedom.

I decided that I was going to let her take a nap, and I would surprise her with a clean house when she woke up. Because cleaning was going to be a surprise for her, it became fun for me. And to put an end to a long story, I feel much happier now than earlier today.

I’m also noticing that the author’s initial words, about how uncouth it is to talk about happiness, have been ringing true. Reading over this post I feel like I sound like an advertisement.

I wasn’t quite sure whether we were to be reading the introduction, and the first chapter, or just the introduction. I chose to read, and write, on both in order to be on the safe side.

First Post on my New Blog

*taps on blog* "Test, test, one, two, three."

Well then,
This is both my first and my second blog. As it turns out two of my classes this semester are exploring Blogs, making me one busy blogger. And yes, I do laugh at my own jokes.

However, here it is. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of the options and controls, but I expect I'll have it all down soon. I'm actually quite picky about visual style, and looking around this page I can easily tell there will be some drastic changes before I'm done here.