First Post and Welcome!

Welcome to Jennifer's Eudaimonia Project. "Eudaimonia" is the Greek word for "right living", or living in a full and deeply satisfying way. It means "flourishing". So, although I am completely patterning my year after Gretchin Rubin's "Happiness Project", and indeed, using many of her goals as my goals, I am incorporating finanical security, environmental impact, and physical wellness. In other words, instead of a project to make my life a little better, or even a lot better, I'm undertaking a life transformation. I hope you join me in my quest to become the bright, shining, independent person who enjoys her changes.


Preparation:
In order to organize this transormation, I started a notebook. It's a little 5x9 Spiral bound thing. On the front cover, I wrote "Beyond Happiness Project". Inside, I put the definition for Eudaimonia. I cut up Post-It notes and made tabs:

• Nagging Tasks
• Happiness Chores
• Pick-Me-Ups
• Confronting Fears
• Half-hour Happies
• List of Goals
• Journal
• Victories
• Ideas

And on the very first page, I wrote the Goal:
To pursue interest and activities which serve to enrich or improve others' lives;
to enjoy such interest and activities while pursuing them;
to reduce distress;
to promote deep values in my life;
to maintain a physically healthy and ecologically responsible lifestyle;
to reduce or eliminate feelings of neglect and deprivation;
to give back;
to tell stories;
to enjoy the process of happiness.


Factors of Happiness:
Through reading "Happiness Project" and research on happiness and play, I've come up with my own factors of happiness. These are my factors, and yours may be different.

2. Physical health
3. Personal relationships
4. Meaningful activity
5. Fun for Fun's sake
6. Appreciating the beutiful and the blessed
7. Material needs met
8. Spirituality
9. Mindfulness/Presence
10. Respecting Values
11. Letting go of the Past
12. Enjoying "Enough". There IS enough.

Waking Up:
From pop culture to best-selling books, one thing most of us agree on is that we live life in a daze. Our daily activities and our worries keep us from living a conscious, deliberate life. We are often at the mercy of life's turnings and windings, lost in a labyrinth for which the only exit is the grave. Longfellow had it right:

"Life is real!  Life is earnest!
To the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the soul."

I do not know the moment I woke up. I started to wake up inside an emotionally abusive marriage, realizing I had become a mouse--a shadow of who I had once been. A ten-year bout with writer's block only confirmed that my life had somehow slipped entirely out of my grasp. Who was I without writing? How had I become someone who altered every aspect of her life to curtail the possibility that someone might be upset? Me? Who started and LGBTA in an ex-Catholic Private College? Me, who used to pack food and just go walking in the middle of the night, possibly not returning for several days, scaring the heck out of my roommates? Me, who defied every authority figure who crossed my path? Me, who was perfectly prepared to slit the throat of any man who ever raised his hand to me?

Yes, me.

I fell asleep. I got beaten spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and even sometimes physically. I, in effect, rolled over and died. Fear and worry got the best of me, as they have gotten the best of almost every American. To paraphrase "They Might Be Giants," I was worried about someone moving my chair, while the world was busy tormenting me. Of course, "my chair" were bills, my ex-husband's often conflicting expectations (and inevitable disappointment and rage), securing ever-more-prestigious employment, and all the other little worries we have while ignoring whether or not our situation is even right, moral, important, or simply completely hypocritical.

While one could argue this transformation I'm heralding is actually five years in, I would argue back that waking up is different from taking deliberate, daily action on decided goals. Yes, for the last five years I have been awakening to my situation: abusive husband, a past I cannot let go of, fear of failure and of success, obesity, lack of self-worth, bad parenting, immoral (to me) behavior, conspicuous consumption, shallowness, cowardice. . .(the list goes on), it is really only this year that I am making an organized, concerted effort to improve my life and my family's lives. It is only this year that I plan to make this a transformation, and not some sort of half-assed Self Improvement project.

"This is my break-out year," I told myself in January, and it is. All roads have led to this chrysalis.