Happiness Scale

I like a lot of things. I also don’t like a lot of things! Today I am going to put them all on a nifty scale because I thought it’d be fun. We’ll say that the “Happiness Scale” goes from -10 (stuff I loathe) to 0 (stuff I’m neutral to) to 10 (euphoria). Now… I’m going to forget a lot of things on this scale, I just know it. And also, if you want to make a happiness scale too, please do! I want to read other people’s quirky things that make them happy. Hmm… now that I’m starting, it’s actually harder than I thought to think about what the extremes would be. Well, here goes.

10 Finding out that I got 90% on the Math Provincial in grade nine. We found out our marks just before the graduation ceremony so my emotions were already high and! I beat Mark.

On one of the nights of the Greece cruise I went on in grade twelve, my friends and I took the blankets from our room after dinner and went up on the highest deck we could find at the front of the ship, and then we sat there. Huddled, under the perfect stars on the clear night. (Looking at stars just makes me happy.) We were in Greece, we were together and we were happy. We were seventeen with our whole lives ahead of us.

Knowing that my family loves me. Thinking about it… really, if that’s not a ten I don’t know what is. It’s a security that runs deep.

9 The first night of my Quebec trip in grade eight with my school. I was in the hotel room with the other girls and we were awesome, in another province than our parents! We prank called the boys’ room and waved to the people on the street and watched the French TV and gossiped about our crushes. Times were good!

8 My brother finding the Neverending Story soundtrack and the Land Before Time soundtrack for me. I didn’t think he’d be able to, because it they were kind of obscure and fairly old. But he did it!

New Year’s! I love the feeling of having a fresh start. And I love the feeling of looking back. And I love that we can ring in the new year with people we love. And like when Dillon’s and Chelsey’s grandmas came up to me at midnight one New Year’s and said, ‘you’re a good girl, don’t ever change’. *tear!*

7 Listening to music that takes me back to a specific time in my life. They say olfactory triggers are keenest at evoking memories, but music is a close, close second for me. The Newsboys ‘Going Public’ CD brings me back to grade 9 so vividly. A Michelle Tumes song reminds me of a plane ride home from Quebec, Riley Armstrong makes me remember grade 11 in full colour. And then, SonicFlood. For some reason, listening to those songs in particular brings me back to the old times of BBCY. Sometimes I miss the ‘Chad days’ so much it feels like I have a hole in me… like the KGB runs and a shot in the dark and banana night of course… sigh.

Listening to a song all the way through with someone else in perfect silence while neither person talks, knowing you both love the song. This is a strange thing about me, I know. On some level, if I can do this with someone, I feel like I’ve bonded with them more in those 2-3 minutes than I would have if we’d spent that time making small talk. A good example is when the window painter was putting George the snowman on my window, we were chatting about music and he said, “What I really love is Don Henley,” but I only had one song by him so I put it on. He said, “Oh, Boys of Summer, I love this song,” and we listened to it without saying anything (except that at one section he mentioned, ‘I love this part,’). Somehow that equated to a really, really cool experience to me.

6 In WoW, walking through Ashenvale at night with the lights off, while it’s raining (raining in WoW), while listening to Nemo. This would probably be a 10 if Ashenvale was real and I was walking through it… and if I could replace the disgusting huge spiders with unicorns!

Watching old home videos of my friends/people I know. The best is when you can still see facial expressions and mannerisms in the three year old version of someone that you recognize now.

The times when I thought that I might have been in love but didn’t know for sure.

Thinking a song’s sound or lyrics are so beautiful that I cry. This happens to me relatively often, and I think I might be uncommon in that songs make me cry far more than movies do. Don’t know why.

Crazy coincidences that make you wonder how events unfold the way they do. And there are big and small examples. A small example is one night when I was cleaning my room. There was a paperclip on my floor and I didn’t know what to do with it so I mindlessly chucked it into my work bag. The next day, my mp3 player’s buttons just would not work. When I got into the office I checked the help forums and found out that it has a reset button (pretty good, really, that I’ve had it for more than a year and never had to use the reset button before) that essentially could only be pressed by an untwisted paperclip. So, the one day when I had a paperclip in my office, I needed it. Nothing else at my desk would have worked.

Riding the bus in the evening when it’s dark but there are still lots of people around. Also, car rides at night. I just like the feeling of being in moving vehicles when it’s dark.

People making remix projects for old soundtracks, and doing them well.

5 People in WarCraft 3 who stay in the game until I am finished using Starfall on their base for the win. Seriously, this shouldn’t make me so happy, but it does. Most dramatic finisher ever.

Doing hard DDR songs. It makes me even happier if strangers are watching at the arcade and you can tell by their eyes that they’re impressed.

Justin claiming that I was his sister to a guy in WoW who PMed him saying that I was a n00b.

People taking the time to reccommend things to me based on their personal experience.

Looking at baby pictures of my friends/people I know.

Having someone say I did a great job in something I made for them.

Babysitting Dillon’s cousin, Paige. Cutie! And she is so smart. You can pretty much have a conversation with her even though she’s only two.

Getting a haircut that I love.

Playing Settlers with my dad and brother! (Winning Settlers is a happy thing, too!)

4 Movie nights.

My boss calling me ‘Sparky’ and me not really knowing why.

3 Dumping a bunch of songs that I haven’t heard yet onto my mp3 player and then realizing when I’m listening to it later on that I love one of the songs.

Getting new clothes.

Editing grammar in a block of text.

Visiting my old jr. high and finding out that the teachers still remember me.

2 Watching cartoons that I watched as a kid.

1 Having someone say they like something I did even though I think I could do better.

0 Lunch break on Wednesdays. The week is half over… only half?!

Booking hostels… as I’ve found, it’s exciting but stressful.

-1 Waking up on Monday.

Shopping, although this is raised a few notches depending on what I’m shopping for and who I’m with.

-2 Running WC with two druids, a really stupid mage and no priest.

Recording audio (when someone else is speaking)

-3 Waking up at 6:20 am. I guess it’s not so bad, except that I am very bad for going to bed at a reasonable time, especially with so much great primetime TV these days.

When my shows are in reruns.

-4 Recording audio (when I am speaking)

-5 When my shows are in reruns for, like, four months. I miss Lost so much!

Phoning to make appointments for things.

Being sick with a cold.

-6 Remembering suddenly a time when I really screwed up and probably hurt someone’s feelings.

-7 Phoning people for business.

The 50 Night Elf warrior named Darkstar on Darrowmere killing lowbies (me, Mike and many others) multiple times and totally corpse camping. Oh my gosh, get some real PvP skills and take people your own level who aren’t just trying to kill trolls for their quest. Seriously.

Answering phones. I don’t know why I hate it so much, but I do and I always have. This is only compounded by the phone system we have at work, because from my phone I can’t tell who is on their line. Because of where my office is, I can’t tell if people are even at their desks, so it makes it so, so awkward for me to cover the phones. There’s been, I’d say, probably fifty times spanning the year I’ve worked there that I’ve misinformed people just because there’s no way I could have known the reality. Like, saying someone is at their desk, hold on and I’ll transfer you when actually that person left hours ago. If no one tells me, how am I supposed to know?? I’m not going to get up and take attendance every ten minutes. Guh. Hate.

-8 Answering phones when the person who usually does is “too busy to”, but then I see her chatting mindlessly with people (delivery people, not even colleagues) for 10-15 minutes several times a day.

Feeling worthless. I know I shouldn’t, but like many others, I just hate myself sometimes.

-9 Thinking about the people close to me dying.

-10 Seeing people fight unfairly; Hearing that marriages of people I know are over; Hearing that someone I know is really sick (Cancer, etc) or terminally ill. I don’t think I’ve hit the -10 mark very much in my life, thankfully.