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Thinking out loud: happiness

Is it true that most people don’t know what they’re good at? That’s interesting. Maybe I can help.

I may not be the world’s best expert, but I’m good enough to enjoy writing, programming, drawing, and speaking. I’m good at being happy. I’m getting the hang of drawing and gardening. I’m starting on carpentry. I’m good at picking up new ideas and making connections.

It reminds me of how in improv comedy, my classmates struggled to fill two minutes with a list of things they loved. Me, I hardly paused for breath.

I might have figured out something here that I can help other people learn.

My mom tells this story about when she came across me reading a book far beyond my age. She asked me if I understood it. I said that I didn’t understand it the first time around, but I knew that if I kept reading it again and again, I would eventually understand it.

Maybe I’m good at figuring out what I’m good at because I give myself permission to be bad at things.

Maybe my life is filled with experiences, people, and things I love because I not only work on shaping my life, but adapting to it. (It took a while to get the hang of seasons, for example.)

I wonder what I’m doing right and how I can share it with others.

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/7201

On This Day...

  • 2013: Sketchnotes: How to Live an Amazing Life (C.C. Chapman, Third Tuesday Toronto) — C.C. Chapman was in town to share insights from his latest book, Amazing Things Will Happen. Here are my sketchnotes [...]
  • 2013: Animating things in Emacs — Some years ago, I came across M-x animate-birthday-present (and therefore animate-string and animate-sequence) while reading through the output of M-x [...]
  • 2012: Tips for making the most of the Toronto Public Library — The Toronto Public Library saves me thousands of dollars of book costs and opens up an amazing trove of knowledge. [...]
  • 2011: Weekly review: Week ending June 11, 2011 — From last week’s plans Work [X] Get priorities and development responsibilities sorted out for project M [X] Continue working [...]
  • 2008: Setting up your Drupal development environment — People found the 7-minute impromptu braindump I gave at last night’s Drupal Toronto meetup useful enough to vote it the [...]
  • 2006: Questions for informational interviewing — How did you get into this work? What do you like the most about it? What do you like the least about [...]
  • 2006: Stains — Henceforth, all of my dressy clothes will be either white or black - something I can either bleach or dye the [...]
  • 2006: Home — My parents and my sister have moved into the house in Alabang, and it was so good to hear from them [...]
  • 2006: Hurrah for cat power! — Link from my sister: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5067912.stm E-Mail from Kathy Chua Random Japanese sentence: 猫は背を弓なりに曲げた。 The cat arched its back.
  • 2004: Whizzball — http://kids.discovery.com/games/whizzball/whizzball.html Cute puzzle game. Thanks to Ching for the link.
  • 2004: Sony U50, U70 — http://www.dynamism.com/u70/main.shtml Ooooooooooh, so pretty, and so, so light! I _really,_ _really_ like it. And I can use a Twiddler to key in [...]