While in Hawaii, I started reading The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, by Gretchen Rubin.

The author lives a “good” life by most people’s standards, yet she finds herself feeling like she should be enjoying and appreciating it more. She decides to spend a year devoted to trying to define her own happiness and devotes one month to each topic she wants to focus on.

I was drawn to the book and the idea – it made me think about some ongoing changes that i am aware of wanting to make in my own life. After all, life is a constant process, right?

As a result of her best selling book, people have started their own “Happiness Projects”. She even has guides on how to start Happiness Project groups.

Suddenly, a ton of ideas went through my head… I’d start my own project and ask all of you to join along. I’d plan out an area of focus each month, I’d have a Hapiness Project blog series where I would post regular updates and have everyone comment on how they’re doing with their project… I even put together a graphic for the series. The ideas went on and on.

And soon after, my INTUITION kicked in.

One of the areas that I planned on focusing on first, one of my main problem areas, is UNCLUTTERING. Not only physical clutter, but mental clutter. Thoughts of all of the things that I want to accomplish, of all of the things that I “have” to do.. they clutter up and overwhelm my mind. And yet here I was, cluttering my mind and my calendar and my To Do list even more… in order to plan a project… that was supposed to help me unclutter… Doesn’t make sense, does it?

No official Happiness Project for me, then.

I haven’t had this blog for long but I LOVE it. I love that it’s helped people. I love that I have a way to record our life. I love that it makes me a better mom – more aware of my thoughts of feelings, and it makes me more thankful for the small things. And I love that it allows me to be part of an even larger community than I had before. I want to continue to love this blog, and not turn it into something that I “have” to do.

I’m still planning on working on all of those things that I mentioned above – uncluttering, letting go, being present, etc. But I am going to do it on my own timeline, and I am not going to commit to writing a blog series on it. I’m going to continue to work on my own personal growth, trust my intuition, and see where it takes me. And I’ll continue to share that with you along the way.

It feels great to have all of that off of my To Do List.