Hi everyone, this week I wanted to share with you how I created my own happiness project. I believe I mentioned briefly that this blog is the result of it, well… in this post I’ll tell you the hows and whys behind it.
I think by now it’s safe to say that everyone who visits my blog that I love love love reading books!! I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a book in my hand, actually it wasn’t very long ago, but that’s a story for another time and place. What I mean is that I’m always reading something!! From reading Gretchen Rubin’s books The Happiness Project and Happier at home, one of the main lessons I took from them was to break down any project you have in mind. Now, for those of you who know me, you’ll know that I’m super-organized and plan things down to the very last detail, sometimes for no reason but to just have something to tick off!!
If you’re wondering what this has to do with Happiness and Happiness projects, I’m almost there!! Bear with me folks!!
So, a few years ago, in my previous role as a library assistant I was part of a group who contributed Staff Picks reviews to a blog that was run by a central team in our main city library. We posted a book review every week and everyone had a day allocated for posting. This blog went on our Auckland Library website back then and it was quite popular back then. I even volunteered to edit a newsletter for a different platform and for a few years enjoyed just creating content along with the daily tasks involved with running the library. So when the central team eventually ended their subscriptions for these two platforms, we had to sadly lay down these hats and return to our normal tasks. However, a spark of interest began in my mind for creating content. I wanted to pursue book blogging as it had brought me so much happiness and filled my cup over!!
Not long after that thought had entered my head, I stumbled upon Gretchen Rubin’s book Better than before which spoke of her earlier book, The Happiness Project and I felt as if the universe was giving me a sign to go for it and begin my blog. Which is exactly what I did, step by step, slowly. I signed up for a one-day Introduction to Blogging course in a local community education programme and borrowed a million books on blogging, WordPress, Blogger, even tried to understand coding but that was too hard. Although it felt like a huge mountain of things I needed to overcome, I managed to get there. I taught myself WordPress and Canva using online tutorials from LinkedIn Learning which my library provides for free and launched this blog. Looking back now, it feels like it’s part of my identity but it’s actually something that gives me clarity and calms me. Reading and writing about what I read, sharing my thoughts with you all, brings me happiness that you wouldn’t fathom. Yes, it’s a bit geeky, but then that’s what makes us librarians tick all the livelong day!! The icing on that particular cake was when my list of followers started growing!!
My scrapbooking and crafting has always given me happiness, joy and excitement. Just like my blogging, I try to do them in small chunks to create a big piece or scrapbook. I think that’s an underlying law of nature, to take things in small doses, a step at a time, a breath here and there, and once you’ve taken them all you come to the end and find you’ve created something amazing or accomplished a goal of yours!!
So friends, I hope now that you’ve heard of my happiness project you can embark on your own. Give yourself permission to figure it out, take a breath and just go for it. If I could, then any of you can!!
I hope you all stay safe and keep reading
Miss Mahee
Miss Mahee's Library of Reads 