As I sat down to write this week's blog, I decided to only post Elsa's because what she wrote made me so HAPPY! This sweet teenager has found what true happiness is and I am so proud of her. May we all continue to look for the rays of sunshine, the sparkling snow flakes that will be coming soon, the special hug from a friend, and of course the yummy chocolate chips in our yogurt :)
~Jen
Recently, I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and tell me that I’m always so positive and cheerful, that I always have a smile on my face! Hearing these comments truly does make my heart happy, but thinking about it, I am not always as happy and joyous as I seem!
I get stressed a lot and lemme tell ya, AP Calc is not helping that, I become very emotional, and if you make me mad ohhhh watch out because I can become a bitch real quick! But, no matter what’s going on in my life, I always find a way to become happy, and that’s because of the people and things I surround myself with.
I’ve been reading and researching a lot about what makes people happy these past couple of years. Last year we focused on a Happiness Project literally all year, so yeah, I learned a littttlleeee bit about what makes people happy.
Happiness is always different for everyone, but for me, it’s the small things in life. Like the fact that I’m going to have vanilla yogurt with chocolate chips for breakfast, I can wear Bryce’s sweatshirt to bed, jamming to music in Georgia (my car!!) with the sun shining and my sunglasses on, walking to starbucks, eating a donut after a long practice, good morning and good night texts, watching YouTube in my bed, putting sweatpants on, etc. This is not to say I don’t love the big things in life, but I try and find joy in smaller things so I can stay positive for longer!
So AP Calc, for example, is kicking my ass right now, but I’m happy about it because I will most likely be dropping at the semester!
Even though the small things in my life are very important to me, the people I surround myself with make me the happiest. It’s hard to put into words the effect everyone has on me, but I can, 100%, for sure say that this past year has been the happiest of my life and I truly believe it’s because of the people I surrounded myself with. Bryce and his incredible family entered my life, a couple girls on my soccer team and I became closer, my best friends have stayed my best friends and we support each other more than ever now, Kate and Emily have grown to the point where we can relate to each other (and piss each other off more), and even though I'm leaving for college, my parents still do so much for me (and make me food)!! For me, happiness has come in the moments I share with these people, the long talks at sleepovers, the soccer tournaments, the long car rides to new places, the amazing food we eat together, the music we listen to together, the rants we have together, and so much more.
These people have created who I am today and how positive of a person I am, and obviously they’re doing a pretty good job if other people notice my happiness too. (also I just want to put in here that food is a VERY big part of my happiness- get me a, iced coffee, chocolate covered strawberry, Portillo's chocolate cake, Lou Malnatis pizza, Chipotle burrito, ice cream, beer nuggets, chocolate covered sprinkle donut, strawberry banana crepe, or mini cupcake and lemme tell ya, I’ll be happy for a couple hours straight!)
~Elsa