Happiness Project Aug. 24, 2024 Saturday

It is a remarkably beautiful day of cool, low humidity, sunshine and I have taken the day off since all the chores are done and my dog has been walked. My pleasure of choice is a day of reading and I chose the newest DISCOVER magazine because it has a cover story about our closest animal friend: the dog, the cat, the horse. But in the article I want to discuss here, is a quote "In the late 1990's and early 2000's functional MRI technology uncovered what happens in the brain when we experience joy. The nucleus acccumbens (the pleasure center) lights up In the late 2000's the same technology also revealed the nucleus accumbens activates when we make a meaningful purchase." The article I was reading "Collecting Your Thoughts" page 44 discusses how collecting enhances memory, forges new connections in the brain, and triggers relaxation as well as the pleasure center. The article goes on to describe the difference between random item hoarding, purposeless and leading to lack of self-esteem, and collecting with purpose, goal, discernment.

I have a lot of small collections: postcards, books, ceramic teapots and cups shaped like little houses, and little wooden houses. I have a scattering of small tins, and an assortment of strange single objects that simply touched me, like a tintype photograph, a perfectly spherical river rock, some fossils, several kinds of World's Fair memorabilia. I also have a scattering of old old school supplies, a very old pencil box, and I used to have a collection of golden rule rulers which disappeared somehow. They did give me pleasure, when I found them and when I looked at them and it gives me pleasure to still have them in the glass fronted curio cabinet in my living room.

A few yars back a couple of women authors, Marie Kondo, and a Swedish woman wrote books about clearing out. One was called Swedish Death Cleaning, about getting rid of all your stuff before you die. I immediate took umbrage at the thought - I like my stuff, lots of things have connections to memories, like that spherical rock from a creek in Plattsburgh, New York where I hiked with a man I was once married to and in love with and his best friend, now deceased. That rock, even just the thought of it, conjures the sound of the rushing water and the whisper of the trees and the smell of the woods, not to mention the memory of being in love and being young with those two young, strong,lithe men, one now old and one dead.

On a practical basis, collections become museums and keep a record of our material culture and history. One of my favorite museums is the Museum of American History in West Deptford (Andoloro Way, Westville) in a farm house, the collection of a lifetime of the proprietor and his family: fishing reels, fossils, electric trains, farm implements, green glass telephone pole insulators, and Christmas train platform figures made from melted down bullet casings in Germany after World War II, my favorite items in his vast collection!

Today the pleasure center of my brain was alight with the joy of reading this much aticipated magazine and having the afternoon off to read, and finding support for my natural inclination to collect objects of interest and delight. I am glad to know that science backs me up!

On Monday, I am going to lunch with the great-neice and we are going to Rancocas Woods, Creek Road where there is a collection of antique shops that I love to visit. The fragrance of the burning scented candles and the hand-made soaps enhances the oy I experience in visiting again with objects I remember from my personal past, for example a pair of book ends made from old crank pencil sharpeners, from the days before electric sharpeners. Happy trails collectors! wrightj45@yahoo.com

The Happiness Project - Post - August 10, Saturday 2024

On Monday this past week, my Seniors Group met as we do each month on the first Monday. Our theme this month was happiness and the members were invited to write in their notebooks each time they felt happy during the month beetween Meetings. When we read off our notes, we put them on the whiteboard in categories:

1.Friends - making and nurturing friendships a priority (phone call, lunch, text, card - try all)

2.Family - visiting with family members (even something small like sending a card or postcard)

#.Nature - taking walks, taking a drive in the country, sitting on the porch or in the yard, pant something, habe some flowers on your porch

4.Entertainments - watching a good tv series, a movie

5.Health- making sure we get vegetables and fruits daily and staying hydrated

6.Spirtual - a spiritual community, meditation, if you are averse to organized relion, try YOGA or as I do - CHAIR YOGA New class beginning in a week at The STATION in Merchantville on Chestnut St. and ongoing classes at LIVE IN JOY in Audubon on Merchant St.

7.Doing good for others - participating in programs to help others (for example, my Meeting donates books to the Free Books Project in Camden at Newton Friends Meeting, Cooper Street) volunteering

8.Pets - a pet from an animal rescue shelter can not only save the pet but save you from loneliness and boredom. They are affectionate, entertaining and fun and in my case, get me out walking!

9.Hobbies - painting, collage, scrapbooking, woodworking, quilting, knitting, crochet, gardening - doesn't matter what the hobby, it is all GOOD

10,sometimes you just need a treat! I don't support unhealthful food choices but sometimes you just need a cookie and tea or an ice cream or a shake (I like a latte') or a smoothie!

11, READ Along with our personal individual lists and examples, I had photocopied articles from AARP on happiness and one from Discover Magazine: Mar/Apr 2024 Discover Magazine, Positive Psychology 101 pg. 36

AARP The Magazine, JulyAug, 2024: One Woman's Search for Happiness, pg. 60 (to be honest I don't see how it would be much different for a man.

A piece of advice I picked up from the New York Times a couple of years ago was to make a note of each time you feel happy so you know what makes you happy, I noted that I feel elated and happy after I go out to lumch with friends, on the way home, the radio plays music I like and I feel content and happy

An old tried and true and studied tip, is to keep a gratitude journal which I do, daily. There is so much to be grateful for and it is a good idea to focus on that rather than on worries or problems.

Well this gives a lot of advice and suggestions In cae you are wondering if I do all these things, yes, I do. For example this morning, I walked my dog with a friend from the neighborhood whom I met through her husband doing yard work. We are now friends and go to Seniors Group together as well as WALKING the dog every day. Writing this blog is one of my many hobbies: and I am getting resources for my next painting to go in a show at The Station in Merchantvile and just this past Monday I put a painting in the Camden County Senors Art Show; so two hobbies! I make fruit smoothies with protein powder every other day to boost my nutrition and I have been a vegetarian for years!

Has all this made me happy! You bet! Do I ever get sad or down in the dumps! Yes I do. I had a couple of unpleasant experiences in the beginning of July that knocked me into a ditch, emotionally, but I WORKED at getting myself back out again. I wrote about it, talked about it with friends, got help, made a plan, and recovered by the end of the month. Feeling sad, feeling hurt, getting anxious are all normal parts of living, but it takes a practice to keep them from taking control of your life, and I prefer to use non-medical strategies for my own occasional setbacks. I have had longer periods that could be called depression, as in when my parents died, but as deep as I fell and as pervasive as my sorrow was, i kept working at it with my strategies and I pulled myself out. During the longer periods I had a lot of pressure from friends to get anti-epression medication, but I had faith in my own strategies from a lifetime of employing them. I just had to endure the sorrow for as long as it took (and it wouldn't be human not to suffer sorrow at such a monumental loss as the death of a parent) even though in case of my parents, it took a couple of years to pull myself back out of the pond of despair.

12, EXPERIMENT- It ocurred to me to ask myself what exactly happiness felt like to me? On my way to my sister's one day, I felt really happy and when I got there, I sat in the car for a few minutes and took note of what happiness felt like. It felt like a blooming in my chest like when a flower opens, and the world felt brighter and I felt a kind of "oneness" with everything around me, the trees, the flowers, the blue sky, the clouds! I felt light and eager and lifted up. That's what happiness felt like to me at that moment.

I hope this list gives any readers who happen on to my blog some tools to keep in your emotional health tool kit! Life is too precious to waste being unhappy or bored - do something and make the most of what time you have! Final tip - keep in mind the word FOCUS and notice what you focus on. You can change your focus just like with binoculars are a radio station.

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

The Road to Publication

A lot of people have a story to tell, maybe most of us! Some of us also like to TELL stories, which is a different kind of thing. I have been very lucky in that I have had for friends a poet who actually had pofessionally published a book of his work, Dan Maguire, (recently deceased,sadly) and an author who has had published three books she has written on Pinelands history: The Forks, Ghosttowns and Other Quirkly Places in the Pine Barrens, and Batsto: Jewel of the Pines, Barbara Solem.

Both of my formally published friends got their breaks through associations. Dan knew someone who admired his work and made a connection for him with a publishing company. Most of the poets I have known with publihed books had to go the independent publishing route, which I will get to.

Barb Solem was friends with a man who worked for a New Jersey publishing company, Plexus. Her friend was an editor for the company and he was the connection that made her route open. The division headed by Barbara's friend, no longer exists and he doesn't work there any more.

I published three books 'independently' which means that I found a printing company that would print and bind my books for a fee, Perfect Printing in Mount Laurel, NJ. The man who did my editing and formatting is no longer with this company and they won't do that anymore so you now have to pay to have editing and formatting done before you submit your manuscript, tat is, unless you know how to do it yourself. Since mine was done so long ago, telling the price is almsot usseless because I am sure it is significantly higher and when I looked into an edition service in a strip mall on White Horse Pike (I no longer remember the name, the carge for editing and formatting alone was $1500). When I had my books printed it was $1000 for 100 books. Later it was $1000 for 50 books previously formatted and edited (by a friends).

Writing for pleasure or writing for publication. I was writing because I was driven by a story I wanted to tell. My father was in the Civilian Conservation Corps and I learned a lot about it and its subsidiary the WPA. When I was hiking in the Pine Barrens, which I did quite a lot in the old days, I came across a lot of CCC History since they did a good bit of conservation work. My first book: White Horse Black Horse was pure fiction involving a photographer and a writer in 1937 who were hired by the CCC to write part of the State Guide on New Jersey. Each State had one of those guides which gave a comprehensive written portrait of the State at that time. Teams of writers, photographers, and artists travelled all the roads of each state documenting historic sites, architecture, and geographical, historical, social observations of all kinds. You can still buy the WPA State Guide to New Jersey, and it is fascinating. So the two characters in my novel travel New Jersey's back roads and they write and photograph labor struggles at Seabrook Farms, the crash of the Hindenburg, and so many other adventures. Also in the plot there is a love triangle which gets resolved by the end.

I loved my book and when I read the chapters, each carefully crafted to end with a cliff hanger, the writing group I attended at the time enjoyed it. Barb connected me to her editor at Plexus and I provided my manuscript. His response wasw that he was interested more in beach reading, and that if a book didn't grab him in the first three pages, it wasn't going to sell, so he wasn't interested. Instead of being defeated, I decided to get it printed myself and I did - TWICE! That gave me the freedom to sell the books (not many) when I gave talks at various historic sites, and to give away copies (which I did freely) to volunteers at historic sites.

I had the writing bug, so since I had tried my hand at a historical novel, I decided to try a more modern relationship novel set in a high school amongst the teachers. Published this one independly as well, didn't even try to go commercial. I just wanted it in book form.

My first book White Horse Black Horse actually gathered a small fan club. They took me out to lunch. I asked them what it was they enjoyed so much about my book and they said "Road Trip" and that gave me another idea.

When I was 21, my boyfriend was drafted and we married and went to Germany together for his tour of service. After he got out, we stayed in Europe for a year and lived in a Volkswagen Van traveling a wide circuit through Europe. I decided to write about that and I did; it is called 1969 Published independently with same process as before. I enjoyed that so much, even finding the write black and white photo for the cover! I gave most of the copies away at a high school reunion since my classmates would have been in the same historic frame. No, it was't that popular, although silence may not mean they didn't like it but just that they didn't read it! My experience is that often people want to tell a story more than they want to listen to or read one.

By then, I had written a historical novel, a relationship novel, and finally, a memoir, the work had brought me to the end of my book writing phase.

My published author friend has a friend or two and who have been commercially published as well and it appears that having an agent can be a big boost to get your work into a publisher. For me, the writing was the part I wanted, beyond that, I wasn't interested - marketing,interviews, speaking tours to generate interest or any of that. So it is a good idea to ask yourself WHY you are writing the book - do you have a great story to tell and you want others to read it? Do you want to make money from it?

There is a third way I almost forgot. The husband of a friend wrote a book on how to find a partner. He had met my friend via an internet dating service and he had a lot of advice. He used an online printing and marketing service. I don't know how much he spent but his book, in my opinion, was mostly things people should know withut a book, and I don't know how much success he had as my friend and I drifted apart when I left the gym where we both used to work out.

The writing that I do now is mostly for the sheer joy of it and I don't write books anymore - that is a LOT of work! I write this blog, my daily journal, and short pieces for an online newletter and a printed journal put out by the South Jersey Quaker community. That's enough for me. Mostly the work I do for those is book reviews or promoting charitable projects like The Free Books Project in Camden, NJ.

Things I think would help: join a writing group. If you want to publish professionally, get an agent and/or editor. Get a subscription to a writers magazine where you can find information on all of that. I bought mine at Barnes and Noble and subscribed to the one I liked best. "Writer" was in the title but that's all I remember.

I hope you find this helpful and I hope you enjoy writing for the sheer joy of it! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com