Day 1: About the happy things

To be honest, it’s quite hard for me to list down 10 things that make me happy the most, since I’m a type of person who’s getting happy easily (yet getting sad easily, HAHA). Even though I don’t express my happiness frequently, you can see my eyes spark when I’m getting happy, and I think these are what sparking joy out of me the most…

10. Good food

Who can say no to good food? Though I’m sort of a picky eater, good food can make me extremely happy. Sometimes by only thinking about food, it automatically boosts my happiness. But if you asked me what my favorite food is, I don’t know the answer, because I always like food as long as it’s good and suits my taste.

But, wait, I just got one name popped up in mind: Chitato with original salt flavor which I called Chitato Biru. I don’t know if this snack is even considered as a ‘food’, but anyway, this snack is my kind of comfort food. Back then I used to buy this snack almost every day in minimarket inside my office building, munched it while working on my spreadsheets to keep my brain running. It helped me a lot! But as now I’m working from home, too bad it’s quite hard to find Chitato Biru here because it’s one kind of ‘limited’ flavor which can’t be found easily in stores, which I don’t know why. Why can’t Indofood produce and distribute this flavor more? Why? Don’t they know there are so many Chitato Biru’s fans out there?

Ah, I wouldn’t mind being hired as Chitato Biru’s ambassador if I could…

9. Enjoying my time watching and reading something good

It’s quite easy to get me happy when I’m watching good movies, series and videos, or reading books and webtoons — but same with food, as a type of person who has wide range of interest, I don’t really know what I like the most. I like any genres, from drama, comedy, slice of life, to action and thriller. But for sure, I always like spending my time to watch, read, or listen to something, which sometimes I avoid on my busy time because I usually got ‘overtime’ on it.

8. Hard work paid off

Since I sometimes get too hard on working or achieving my goal, yet a bit competitive, so it would grant me pleasure when I get my hard work paid off. Even to trivial things like joining a small competition, when I managed to be a winner, I would be sooo happy!

7. Collecting and editing photos

I love taking and editing photos (even the results are not so good), but I’m a type of person who rarely publish them and choose to keep it for myself, while usually spend so much time to edit my photos. Sometimes it feels ridiculous that I always ensure my photos or pictures are curated aesthetically to be posted on Instagram stories, but I never post anything on my feed… I don’t know, I’m just feeling like they’re not good enough to be posted on feed. When I got too serious on editing my photos, sometimes my friends mock me, “oh you’re doing it again, taking 3 hours to just to edit one photo?” And sadly, their mockery was true but I just couldn’t help to stop. But indeed, editing photos really bring out satisfaction out of me!

Maybe that’s why I created a Steller page, to post some photos I took and edited from vacations so they wouldn’t just end up in my gallery.

6. Exercising

One of my 2020 resolutions was to get healthier by started doing exercises as my routine. Getting hospitalized twice in just few months made me realize that I wasn’t not living a healthy lifestyle, and I was triggered to change that. Previously I rarely did sport, the only sports I was good at were running and swimming (not really good but good enough to get A marks on P.E. subject in college lol), and unfortunately I was sucks at other sports. Besides I’m a kind of lazy person, my body is just very stiff and never been so agile to do sports. But earlier this year, after made the healthy-lifestyle resolution, I finally found out the joy of doing exercise aside from running and swimming. At the first three months of 2020, I was introduced to some fun exercises like gym, zumba, and yoga, which I regret why I started late (because zumba and yoga were provided free by my office every week but I never had any urge to join the class). As physical exercise is scientifically proven to boost endorphin, serotonin, and dopamine — and after doing those exercises, I felt the impacts personally. After all, I become happier every time I’m doing exercises.

Unfortunately, pandemic attacked too soon this year, and I’m rarely doing exercise again since working from home — my space at home is too limited to do such activities and honestly I don’t really like exercising alone. No wonder I’m getting less energetic since working from home… Yeah it’s weird for an introvert like me but when it comes to exercise, I like doing it more with other people, even though it’s a tranquil sport like yoga. Let’s hope this pandemic get over soon so that I could do exercise again with people!

5. Getting a good rest after a long, tiring day

I like getting busy and keeping myself busy, but as I get exhausted easily, having a good rest to close a long, tiring day always sounds veeeery good to me. When I was super tired, and finally got to lay down, I usually say to my bed, “thank you for being so nice, I love you…”

I think I want to marry my bed.

4. Hanging out or going on a trip with my friends

It’s quite funny that I hardly make friends but one of my biggest fear is having no friends because it would make me feel lonely the most. I can say I don’t have so many friends but fortunately I was blessed with some good, high-quality circles around me, and I think I got 30ish percentage of my extroversion level mostly from the time I spend with them. Hanging out with my friends, playing around, doing fun activities, having good chit-chats, or going on a trip with them especially on holiday, surely will boost my happiness and somehow recharge my energy. Luckily technology nowadays are already sophisticated enough to provide any virtual meeting because I miss going out with my friends so bad, but still…

Let’s go for another trip after this pandemic ends, shall we?

3. Gathering with my family

This year’s pandemic really attacked us hard, but for me, there are still some blessings in disguise that should not be taken for granted. One of it is a chance to spend time with my family more, since I realized in 2019 I didn’t spend so much time with my family. Because I work in different city from my hometown, last year I spared time with my friends more often, hung out with them from weekend to weekend, and went to my hometown only once in three up to four weeks. Now, the fact that I could work from home (for 5 months already and still counting), is undoubtedly such a great blessing for me. Especially, being home with Ibuk around…

2. Fangirling

Frankly speaking, I’m just really new in this fangirling world, but let me tell a bit story of this activity (that sometimes has ‘bad stereotype’ among people) and how it gives me extra dopamine boost. Korean music — especially ballad genre — always fits my taste very well and if I could show you my Spotify Wrapped from 2016, you’ll see some K-pop songs dominated my top songs for years in a row. But back then I always said to myself that I would never have that kind of ‘fanatic’ over specific singers or groups… until I met BTS this year, at the time when I reached my lowest point in life.

Strangely, they gave me energy. Actually I knew BTS since years ago — who doesn’t? — even some of their songs were always there in my most-played Spotify songs since 2016, but I don’t know, I never had an urge to know them personally because I also have any other singers and groups I like out there. Until that day (I remembered it was really exhausting day at work, even my eyes got swollen without any cause), I happened to watch BTS’ Dynamite music video that was just released. And I suddenly got a feeling of… love at first sight? or whatever you named it, but I officially declared myself as a BTS’ fangirl since then. It’s quite late, but still I’m blessed to live in the same era with these boys and even got a chance to enjoy their performance. Until I realized, they are providing more than just a good music, good dance, good visuals, and good performances, but most importantly, they made me feel like I found new, good friends when I was lonely. Just like Big Hit’s tagline, “Music & Artist for Healing”, the most crucial part is they gave me a companion I needed the most when I was attacked by mental breakdown. Slowly, I was able to find the light again. Time by time, I could finally think more positively towards anything, and got to be more outspoken of what I’m feeling.

Now I understand why people are dedicating themselves as hardcore fans of certain persons or groups. It’s an abstract feeling, but by seeing and getting to know more about your idols, or gathering with other people who have same interest as you, indeed make you feel that you found a new family. And yes, seeing what makes you happy regularly somehow gives you bliss and another reasons to live.

1. Being able to feel grateful

Actually, writing this topic reminds me of my #500DaysofHappiness project when I wrote all the good things happened every day for 500 days straight (though it’s discontinued after Day 500 because you know… I’m busy… lol). At those times, no matter how bad my days were, I just wrote and wrote all the good things I experienced every day. At one of the bad days I even wrote, “at least I’m still alive, and I’m thankful of that” and reading that again just makes me smile. Sometimes we think that happiness is hard to be achieved, yet it’s so easy to think of how pity our life is, but I just came into conclusion that being thankful is one of the easiest ways to achieve that. Being thankful has never been that hard, anyway, and it doesn’t cost so much effort — as long as we put our mindset on it.

By listing down good things like this, it had me realize there are so much blessings in my life, also help to remind me that I should be grateful even more, yet know that there are so many things we shouldn’t take for granted. When I am able to feel thankful over everything that I get in life, it would somehow doubled the joy.

And of course I’m still in the learning phase to have more and more gratitude towards anything, so that I could get utmost happiness.

So let’s be more thankful for everything, will you?