If they make Tony Adams captain we could all go screaming in the park (Joe Strummer)

In one of my happy places

Wie geht's?

For the most part, I'm a happy sort of bloke. A colleague and I were discussing happiness recently and she offered to lend me some of Gretchen Rubin's books.

These are The Happiness Project and The Four Tendencies (which I'll write about in the Baggy Trewsers blog).

Why am I generally a happy bloke? 

According to current research cited in Gretchen's book - its mainly about your genetics, so I have my parents to thank for 50% of my predelection for happiness (age, gender, ethnity, marriage status, income, health, occupation, religious affiliation make up to 20% and the other 30% is a product of how I think and act).

So thanks to Dulcie and Graham, Jacky Purdy (she's beautiful inside and out), and me - I'm a happy bloke. 

It also helps that I'm a teacher on a good wage who lives on a few acres in the country with no neighbours to speak of.

I'm pretty sure my other 30% comes from my love of music (15%) and English (reading and writing - 15%).

Here are the things that are currently adding to my happiness:

• It's autumn (I LOVE autumn) and we had our first frost yesterday (so good!)
• Music and reading (on the day I wrote this post I finished a Desmond Bagley adventure story, started another Anne Tyler novel, dipped a toe into The Happiness Project while listening to Brand X albums in the warmth of our Garden Room while the dogs slept at my feet)
• Writing (I worked on some posts to four of my blogs)
• I enjoy menial tasks like hanging out washing, picking up horse poo, baiting rat traps (rats don't like winter so they start casting around for some warmer lodgings)
• Following Arsenal F.C. - we play Liverpool overnight so I'm forever hopeful (if they lose I'll be momentarily less happy)
• Looking at my record collection and posting photos on the Facebook vinyl group I belong to (the Brand X live album is great so I needed to share that today)
• Listening to MNAC albums and writing about them (Herman Dune was the latest band I never would have discovered without Alex, Lew and Tom's input) 
• Seinfeld (the show - it figures in my daily life in many ways - quotes come to mind and Pinterest groups have stills that instantly make me smile)
• The Beatles posters in my music room (as well as my other decorations in there - they bring me joy everytime)
• Watching Asher interact with his mum and us (Papa and Mema) is a real source of happiness!

Love and peace - Wozza

I am he as you are he as you are me a nd we are all together (The Beatles)

Wie geht's?

Thanks to reading Anne Tyler's A Spool Of Blue Thread, I've been thinking a lot about the various stages we go through in life between being a child and old age.

Then Seth Godin put this on his blog:

And who are you really?
There’s a desire to celebrate our “authentic” self.

But perhaps our considered self, the one that shows up when we’re doing our best to be consistent, generous and professional–that’s our authentic self. And the voice that slips out when we’re tired, stressed or busy is simply an incomplete and lesser version of who we actually are.

We’re the sum total of the interactions we choose to create and the changes we contribute.

This made me reflect on my 'authentic' self and I tend to think it's just the present tense me. Whatever you see right now - that's my authentic self. So, yes, the sum total is the real me.

I do like how he has the 'considered' self, though. I take it that's the reflective self that you are reading right now.

Currently, I'm reading The Vivero Letter, an old Desmond Bagley adventure book. It was first published in 1968 and I first read it as a young boy.

Reading it again now is quite fun, as in the real world of 1968 John Lennon and The Beatles existed and they are alluded to a few times in the story as a cultural reference point for the times.

I'm certainly a very different person to the young boy of 1968 (I was 11) but yet I'm still very much the same person in 2021.  

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. In my previous post I indicated that I may have been inconsistent with my own children re a movie on a birthday tradition. However, Jade reminds me that there were quite a few - including Tarzan (the Disney animated one); The Great Mouse Detective; Corpse Bride; Nightmare Before Christmas; and various Star Wars movies (the reboots plus Episode 1, 2, 3). I'm pretty sure the other three will be able to remember others.

"I'm going to lie low," I said mendaciously. "While I do some heavy thinking."

My original hard back copy
from 1970 looked like this

Wie geht's?

Hopefully the answer to that question is that 2021 has started off more positively than 2020 for you but I know a lot of the planet is in lockdown or some sort of covid-19 hell.

Here in Nu Zild, life continues to gear up for a normal return to work for me next week with students set to arrive back on campus a week later.

In the meantime I'm continuing to read the George Lucas bio and a novel I last read 51 years ago: Running Blind by Desmond Bagley.

I bought it in hardback in 1970 and, at the time, it signalled something of a transition towards more adult themed novels.

Recently, I was browsing in the Hastings' Warehouse and saw a copy for $6.00 so I decided to re-read it.

It's still an exciting enough adventure/spy story but the writing hasn't aged particularly well, or else my tastes have expanded during the 51 intervening years and my standards have risen. Take your pick.

I guess you could file this away in the 'you should never go back' category.

That George Lucas bio though! Boy, that is delivering!

Love and peace - Wozza.