Author: Gretchen Rubin
The Happiness Project
@gretchenrubin

Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

I am not really a craft person.  I’ve dabbled in calligraphy and origami, needlepoint and latchhooking.  I took a pottery class this year and did many art projects as a child.  I’ve considered taking drawing or painting classes.

The thing is, I don’t have the passion for arts and crafts.  I get bored and move on.  I don’t have the attention to detail in my work to make it really special.  I think learning the violin took too much out of me and I just can’t feel that much passion for another artistic pursuit. 

I am, however, a baker, particularly cookies.  I love baking (not so much cooking but baking). What is the last thing I made?  Jam-filled butter cookies!  I think cookies are my favorite thing to bake.  I love the process..mixing the dough…tasting the dough…making the test cookie (my grandmother taught me to ALWAYS make a test cookie– I don’t always make a test cookie but when I don’t I often regret it)…scooping the dough onto the cookie trays…setting the timing and waiting…tasting the cookies…putting them out on the wire racks…waiting for them to cool…putting them away in tins.  Oh, how I love making cookies!  The problem isn’t the time for cookie making, but that I eat too much of the dough plus too many of the cookies.  Otherwise I would make cookies much more often, but I would be quite overweight. 

Here’s the most recent recipe I made.  These are delicious, and no one can eat just one These are NOT a health food.

Jam Filled Butter Cookies (from allrecipes.com, modified)

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

4 egg yolks

3 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup fruit preserves, any flavor (I have tried strawberry and raspberry, both were great!)

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar, and egg yolks. Mix in flour a little bit at a time until a soft dough forms. Roll dough into 1 inch balls. If dough is too soft, refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes. Place balls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Use your finger or an instrument of similar size to make a well in the center of each cookie. Fill the hole with ½ teaspoon of preserves (I usually use a ziploc bag and cut off the corner to make this easier).

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until golden brown on the bottom. Remove from cookies sheets to cool on wire racks.

Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

Sense of wonder…that seems so…spiritual and new-agey!  Not really my thing.  I prefer much more down to earth stuff

–But I agreed to do this project, write according to the prompt each day.  (Though I am afraid over the holidays I may not be able to as I will be traveling and may not have internet.  But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try up until then, and then make that up when I get back.)–

When I think of a sense of wonder, I think of many things…in fact, I believe I live my life with a great sense of wonder…I get excited by so many things:  bridges, weather, nature, cats, children…let me just list some specific examples that come to mind:

Bridges:

I love all the bridges around where I live (St. Louis).  We have several large rivers and bridges and rivers go hand in hand.  Whenever I drive over a bridge I get a sense of excitement, particularly crossing the Mississippi River!  In my half marathon in October we ran over a bridge over the Missouri River.  I found the view to be breathtaking!  I have contemplated running a race in Quincy, Illinois this coming May purely because the race course goes on two bridges over the Mississippi River.  I think that would be so wonderful.

–(That feels right:  wonderful:  sense of wonder.  That’s really more my style, seems more down to earth and Hannah-like versus some sort of “deep”, new-age thought process.)–

Various moments from my most recent cruise:

Looking off the balcony of my stateroom on the Carnival Legend—looking at the ocean, and nothing but the ocean until it disappears over the horizon.  Surrounded by nothing but water.

The beautiful color of the water in the Caribbean.  So blue, so beautiful. 

Mayan ruins of Xunantunich.  The only Mayan ruins I’ve seen so far in my life.  Unbelievable.

Weather:

We get some wonderful thunderstorms here, particularly in the spring.  One night the storm was particularly bad, accompanied by thunder and lightning and heavy rains and wind.  The sirens were going off…we were trying to leave to go to a friend’s house for pie…so awesome!  (We waited it out.  I don’t have a death wish.)

Cats:

I am often fascinated by my cat,  and by other cats, especially when all the cats seem to act very similarly.  Just like people, right?  Remarkable!  Plus cats are simply adorable.  Why are they adorable?  So that we will take care of them and feed them, right?  Wow!

Children:

In my line of work I see many children each week.  They are so full of curiosity and so eager to learn!  Don’t get me wrong, they are not always eager to learn the violin, but they are always eager to learn SOMETHING.  I am not a parent, but I would say that children are one of the biggest sources of a sense of wonder we adults can find.  If for no other reason than they remind us that WE used to be a children and have that same unquenchable curiosity.

The point is that I cultivated a sense of wonder throughout all aspects of my life in 2010.  I look forward to continuing in 2011…what new places will I visit?  What new phenomena will I observe?  What bridges will I run or drive over?  (Will I continue to eschew more spiritual and new-age ideas? )

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

This is a tough one for me.  I don’t consider myself a writer.  I do some writing, I’ve been published (just a little), and I love blogging, but I really consider myself a teacher and a violinist.

That brings me right to the first answer.  What do I do each day that doesn’t contribute to my writing?  What I’m doing right now—telling myself I’m not a writer, telling myself I’m not good enough.  Self-doubt.  So I don’t write. 

Can I eliminate it?  Probably not entirely, but I can try. 

As a child I loved to write.  I also loved to play the violin. So I became a musician…and not just any musician, a SERIOUS, CLASSICAL musician.  And to be a good SERIOUS, CLASSICAL musician I was told to stop doing other things except practicing.  I was told that if I spent enough time practicing then I would be able to succeed and get a job in an orchestra, and then I would be happy. 

So I did that.  I practiced and “succeeded” and got a job in an orchestra.  And I HATED IT. So I left. 

Maybe the orchestra wasn’t good enough?  Maybe I needed to have gotten a better job in a better orchestra?  I kept trying, I kept practicing, I wanted that good job in a good orchestra that would bring personal satisfaction and happiness. But it never happened for me. I wasn’t good enough to get a job like that.

See the self-doubt?  There it is.  I wasn’t good enough to get a job like that. 

That’s a very negative way to look at MYSELF.  Not being good enough.  Not, for instance, saying, I didn’t work hard enough, or had a different personal style, or didn’t deal with performance anxiety very well.  Nope.  Wasn’t good enough.  And for awhile I felt that since I hadn’t achieved my goal, I didn’t deserve happiness.

The fact of the matter is, orchestral musicians are among the most unhappy people in the world (there have been studies, I will try to find a link later.) 

But it’s just a huge bundle of self-doubt that I need to get rid of (in particular, in order to make 2011 the year of HAPPINESS). 

Final thought:  I’m writing right now, even though I am hesitant to use the #reverb10 in the title as I know people will come and read this…and likely judge me NOT GOOD ENOUGH.  But I do it anyway.  Who cares what they think!  I want to share!

I want to write.

I saw this on another blog I follow and thought it looked like fun.  It’s called Reverb 10.  I am going into it fairly blind (I decided not to do my usual overkill of internet research, primarily because I am tired, but also don’t want to spoil it), but it will involve writing and reflecting on my year and what is to come. Each day the participants are given a prompt to follow…

I wanted a new project and this looks perfect.  Hopefully it won’t be too time consuming!