The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. ~ Marcus Aurelius

It was a really good weekend, there’s a bigger issue there and I’ll get to it in a bit. But first the weekend, Saturday was a lazy day, I watched some college football and made a homemade stuffed crust pizza. It had suddenly hit me this week that making a stuffed crust pizza really shouldn’t be that hard, and it wasn’t, and it was good.

Sunday was a much different day. We’re entering gift giving season, while I’m not a big fan of Christmas, I am a fan of giving good gifts and this time of year there’s a lot of it. I have a large number of family and friends with birthdays in October and November and then of course there is Christmas. I’ve always tried hard to find gifts that truly mean something to someone, to understand who they are, and find a gift that will both have an impact and surprise them. Especially for my young nieces and nephews.

So Sunday started with a mission, I had a gift in mind for someone dear to me and I headed to Monterey because I was pretty sure I could find the gift there. Monterey is one of my favorite places on Earth and a really peaceful place to walk along the shore. I typically walk about three miles a day, so the plan was simple, find the present, get my walk in and have a really nice seafood lunch. All of that happened, the weather was spectacular, the drive was nice and the halibut I had for lunch was really great.

I wrapped the drive back up with a nice drive north and some grocery shopping, a nice dinner and of course some work on the Ministry of Happiness Blog.

So it was a nice weekend, big deal, but in fact it is a big deal. I moved to the San Francisco area a little over four years ago. When I arrived her I pretty quickly started a new social life, I did a little online dating, and made a couple of social contacts to do things with. Then the pandemic hit and really twisted a monkey wrench into all of that. Between the lockdown, the need to socially isolate and my propensity toward social isolation I became pretty isolated and lonely. I’ve talked before about falling into a state of languishing and that lasted until about six months ago when I finally started feeling like myself, at least by comparison. Where I had, had no motivation, no real ambition and the world had started to feel really bland in every way, I had finally started to do things that made me happy, and really interact with the world a little more fully. It felt good.

In the last couple of weeks though I realize there’d been another change, a gear shift if you will. I think the spark was starting to plan my 60th birthday year long celebration. Planning my trips to the Mojave Desert and Vegas in December, Mardi Gras in February, Baja in March and Burning Man for my actual birthday in August got me rolling again. Additionally, I got my head around work and lost some of the weight I’ve been carrying on that front. Being 15 months out from retirement has given me a whole lot of freedom and stress relief. As the time shortens there are more and more things at work that I can truly not care about.

And that’s the message for tonight, find those points of joy in your life, travel is obviously one of mine. Find the right community to bring along and most of all go for it, whatever it is. Life’s too damn short to languish, so go get it, and have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane