What makes me happy

I dis­covered a bunch of things about myself during my travels in Europe in 2003. Here’s a per­man­ent reminder to myself about some of them.

• I not only like being on my own these days, it’s a neces­sity for my happiness
• I really love museums and inter­est­ing art
• His­tory and polit­ics still fas­cin­ate me
• Dis­cus­sions about polit­ics and film with good red wine and great food are still my favourite
• The right sort of music can make you feel good no matter where you are
• I really do want a kid and prob­ably soon
• I’m really look­ing for­ward to having a cat again; free cute black kitten wanted…
• I loved my old job and I really do want some­thing like it again after all, but in the mean­time, I have other options
• Even if I never get a fab­ulously amaz­ing job again, I could hap­pily live a life that involved work­ing peri­od­ic­ally so long as I got to travel like that every (European) summer.
• Expect­a­tions are what get me every time. I just have to stop ima­gin­ing how good the nightclub/drinks with friends/whatever is going to be and then I won’t feel so let down when it does­n’t mater­i­al­ise, or when the people I’m expect­ing will call me don’t call me back.
• I’m appar­ently one-night stand mater­ial but not second date mater­ial and def­in­itely not rela­tion­ship mater­ial at this stage.
• But I can’t be too bad on first impres­sions, because at least I had quite a few one night stands
• My thesis is slightly on the wrong track, but it’s close to where it needs to be. My super­visor is def­in­itely right to keep using the term ‘lan­guage wars’ and I think I’ll be able to throw myself into this prop­erly again soon.
• I have a lot more patience than I remembered. Or at least, my patience has really improved and I like myself better with patience.
• Some of the people I think are my friends are often not my friends. I need to let them go.
• I crave the kind of light-hearted, gather-reg­u­larly-for-drinks com­munity that I seem to read about reg­u­larly on your vari­ous journ­als but I don’t think I’ll ever be a part of those communities.
• I love lan­guage in all its forms
• I never ever want to work for Mur­doch ever again
• I really hate the insec­ur­ity of freelancing
• A press pass is a won­der­ful thing
• I need wide streets with trees to make a city bearable
• I hate traffic
• Crowded cities make people rude
• People can be cruel, espe­cially when they feel they have no respons­ib­il­ity to you because they only just met you
• Other people are incred­ibly gen­er­ous with their time, money and intel­lect even to com­plete strangers
• Hap­pi­ness is a night of museums sur­roun­ded by other inter­ested strangers
• Hap­pi­ness is wild sex with a great kisser on the top deck of a boat in the middle of the baltic sea.
• Hap­pi­ness is sit­ting in the sun on the banks of the Tajo with a good book
• Hap­pi­ness is great food and great wine with new and old friends in cosy houses
• Hap­pi­ness is dan­cing to excel­lent music in clubs with people you know (Family in Toledo, Roxy in Prague)
• Hap­pi­ness is sun­sets, water and trees