This was where I began my ventures into creating a happiness journal. It's taken many different names—Cloud 9, a bunch of emojis... the current one is "joy via niksen."
Niksen is the Dutch concept of doing... nothing. Doing something without some sort of fulfilling goal.
That's what I try to achieve with this book, and my journal. It's for no one but myself, I write in it for myself, whenever I want, however long the entries are, not caring how much data I use. Printed, this thing could fill up a paperback cover of Order of the Phoenix and then some.
Is it because I have simply lost the ability to care? (That's a lie, I still care. Too much.)
But I don't care what people here think. Even though this is an experiment. I've never written this kind of book before.
My goal is to "immortalize" this journal, just in case my Notes app crashes and literally everything is lost. (Highly unlikely, seeing as it's part of a Cloud service, but still. I get paranoid with this much information, don't you?)
I've thought often about printing this entire Notes document out (yes, it's all one document and it's very, very long) and counting how many pages there are—but still, I'm worried I'll lose everything in the process. For archaeological purposes, when everything dies out and such. Aliens can decode this English language and discover what my life was like—not that I have significant societal impact, but I can dream.
Ahem. I digress.
Which is why I'll post this first entry of my journal. This entry was written in the late morning. And it's where the rest of this adventure started—born through Apple Notes (no, I'm not sponsored).
Here you go.
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I was accepted into my dream university in my dream major as a transfer student. And the rest is pretty self-explanatory—mundane, even. Walks, Swan Lake Waltz, harpists, baguettes... (I'm not new to classical music, though; I've been playing violin for the past ten years.)
This joy over mundanity was who I am then, and as you'll see, it's who I continue to be, who I aspire to be.
Yes, it might be underwhelming. But it changes as time goes on. There are a lot of capitalized words. There's a lot of freaking out. There is a significant amount of infatuation.
As you'd expect, the chapters of this book will change as I continue to post.
