What has brought me happiness this week?

I've been pondering happiness a lot this week. My roommate and I have been talking a bit about it too.

Although happiness is sometimes not as easy to feel as when I was younger, I feel like joy can often be found if I simply look around. Therefore, I wanted to talk about a few of the things that brought me happiness this week!

• Family: Last Sunday I went up to my parents' house and my whole family was there. It was the best ever. Ever.
• Friendship bread: On Monday, my friend brought me a loaf of friendship bread along with a bag of bread starter. I haven't had this kind of bread in years, but it is so delicious! I ate it slowly throughout the week and loved it. But also, I especially loved seeing my friend Kristen who brought it to me!
• Bad day kindness: I may have had a couple bad days this week. Work and school have been really stressful. However, on one of those days, I mentioned to a couple of my friends that I hadn't had a very good day, and they gave me hugs and invited me to hang out with them and were just so kind. 
• Texts from friends: Being invited to things or being asked what I'm doing tonight makes me feel so cared about. I feel like maybe it's a silly thing. But I know that my top love language is quality time, and I think that just knowing that people want to spend time with me makes me feel very loved. I also love when people text me. This week I got several invites and texts, and it made me happy!  
• Carpool: I mentioned my carpool on here at one point, but I think I managed to wake up for carpool all three days this week, and that was pretty happy, and I also really love my carpool friends. 
• Snow: It snowed during institute on Wednesday. I may have snuck out after learning about the snow and walked around in its beauty for ten minutes or so! 
• Realizations of answered prayers: This week I kept realizing that God answers my prayers, and I also kept hearing stories about God answering prayers. I know he hears and answers prayers. I love prayer!
• Psych: Happy and sad. Psych had the last episode ever this week. I liked how it ended though, so that made me happy. And I loved watching it with friends. 
• Spending time with ward friends: I got to see friends in my ward most of the days this week. I love them.
• Spending time with any friends: I got to see several friends this week. I love them!  
•  BOWLS FOR HUMANITY!: I was so excited for Bowls for Humanity, which is a really cool event where local students and local artists donate pottery and bowls to the Food and Care Coalition and then people can look at the bowls and buy them and eat soup. All of the money goes to charity. I was sad that the whole gang couldn't come this year, but I still had a lot of fun and perhaps spent more than I should have. (Oops! but I really loooove the bowls I bought)
• Music: On one of my bad days this week, I was in a really negative mood, but I had also been planning to audition for a local musical with Miss Lauren L that night. I so did not want to go. I just wanted to go to bed or something. However, after getting home from school, I started practicing for my audition. Singing and music helped pull me at least a little bit out of my negative feelings. Music makes me happy.
• Avatar: I really love Avatar the Last Airbender. When I can, I watch an episode before I get out of bed on Saturday mornings, and I was able to do that this morning! Nerdy, I know.
• Errands with Jordan: This morning my roommate Jordan and I went and got groceries, went to Costco, you know, everyday stuff. But it was really fun. It's not like we were being all energetic or anything, but it was just nice and fun. 

This list is actually longer than I thought it would be, and now I keep thinking of things that I don't want to leave out from the list. However, for the sake of sleep (since I need to go to bed), I will end the list here. Turns out that despite the highly stressful week, there is a lot of good and a lot of happiness that I can find in my life!

Something bothersome

So, I feel like I more often talk about things that I like on here, and I also really hesitate to share my opinion, but today I'd like to talk about something that's been bothering me.

Lately, I've been hearing something a lot--something about how people perceive things. I feel like a lot of people have been saying things like, I'm not one of those "perfect" [insert certain type of person here]. And maybe it shouldn't bother me. Maybe I should just ignore these comments, but whenever I hear people say things like this, I want to remind them that all of us are different and we have so much to learn from our differences.

All of us make mistakes. All of us have different strengths and different weaknesses. Christ lived a perfect life, but the things that I hear when people make these comments do not sound like people wanting to be more like Christ. These comments sound like people feeling like there is some perceived ideal that doesn't even exist that they are either happily different from or trying to become. I am pretty sure that anyone who would be considered to fit this mold would not agree that they fit the mold.

One of the things that I've studied about and that I really love is that everyone is different, and by using our different strengths, we can strengthen each other. I wish I could better describe how I feel about this concept because I think it is so incredible. People are given strengths and talents and gifts. However, people also have weaknesses. But if we work together and use our strengths to the best of our ability and work on our weaknesses and allow others to help in areas that we are weak, we can become so much greater, not only individually but also as a whole, as humans. We can teach each other. I've learned how to improve on some of my weaknesses by learning from others who have strengths in those areas. We have so much that we can learn from each other. We have so much that we can do and become if we work together and do our best.

I wish we could better see how people are so different and unique and talented in different ways. I think that it is possible for us to embrace our differences while still striving to become the best person we can be. I think that we are meant to be different so we can learn from each other, and I love it so much.

Mornings

As most people know, mornings are so not my thing. I'm trying, but I really struggle. I sleep through my alarms (yes, multiple), and then I have the hardest time with feeling optimism and energy in the morning, except maybe on Sundays (Sundays make me happy so I feel happy pretty quickly).

Some mornings, like today, I seriously feel like I can't focus on anything. I try to keep my eyes open and maintain focus and energy, but I just drift off into sleepiness or mindless distraction or personal daydreaming. It makes me feel bad to have so little focus when I really need to be focusing. Maybe I just need more sleep. I feel like there have been times in my life where I've been not exactly a morning person, but I've been more my optimistic self in the mornings, but that just has not been lately. It takes until midday for me to muster up much enthusiasm and zest for life.

Lately, I have some really great friends who have wanted to carpool with me to campus. It has made my mornings much better! Our carpool has only worked out a couple of times so far. I was sick a bit last week. And then I didn't hear my alarms this morning, and I woke up to my friend calling me asking if I was ready to go. Oops! I felt bad.

However, I think this story goes to show how much I love people, but this semester I haven't had many people to talk to during the day. I work on my computer and sometimes IM people, but it's pretty quiet. I also don't really have many people that I get to talk to on campus. But seeing or talking to friends in the morning just makes me happier. I feel like it helps me wake up and helps remind me who I really want to be. Because honestly, I feel like people are the most important. I want to be someone who loves and serves people. Therefore, I'm feeling so grateful for my friends who wanted to carpool with me.

I am planning to keep working on being better at waking up. Maybe I should go to bed earlier. That might help. So I'll keep doing my best. And even if carpooling doesn't necessarily work out (but I hope it does), I like how we've been trying to do it because it's taught me more about how I can be a better me.