More on Happiness

I listened to Sonja Lubomirski talk about her new book on Happiness through Innovation Hub as I ran through Golden Gate Park today.  She spoke about happiness in terms of relationships, job/status, and community/religion.

With relationships, she differentiated passionate love and companion love.  The passionate love often is at the beginning of a relationship - which is much like infatuation, and cannot last.  The companion love is something like what's felt through best friends.  Passionate sex is something that wane with long relationships and marriage - because we start to see our partners similar to siblings.

She described Job satisfaction and societal status through Hedonic Adaptation.  Hedonic adaptation is our human ability to adapt to positive or negative changes in our lives.  Even if good things happen in our lives (marriage, job change, moving), we would often become accustomed to the change, so the honey-moon happiness always doesn't last.  This kind of happiness is fleeting.  People who didn't experience the change in jobs, or marriage, etc wouldn't feel the honey-moon happiness - but remain at their original level of happiness.  In a lot of ways, it's best to be realistic about making changes in life.

Community or Religion gives us a sense of connection and support network - so this can bring us a sense of happiness.  

*********

Looking back at the things that I was influenced with 5 years ago - comparing myself to my colleagues, etc - the things that bothered me back then, about my self doesn't bother me any more...  I don't feel as inferior or insecure compared to other people - even if I don't have a kick ass residence, or mate, or hobby, or body or whatev's.  I see now, what is behind the beautiful faces - and I'm not so sure if all that is really worth all that.
I've seen the day to day of a dream job - it really does just look good on paper.

I guess life is becoming more and more 'need-based'...  where as, when youthful it was more 'desire-based'...  It's turning out that what I want is increasingly becoming what everyone else wants.  Happiness, comfort, love, mate, etc...

Architect

There are many different kinds of architects.



I recently saw an exhibition of lebbeus woods' works at sfmoma.  He is a paper architect with so very few built works.  But I can see the allure and power of his mind.

Tadao ando is one of the fathers of modern architecture in Japan.  He had a high school education, no formal training in architecture, and was a boxer.  He has a crazy temperament and would even punch his workers.  Crazy guy - iconic.

I have only worked in small offices except for my short stunt at bgk and nbbj.  I like learning architecture through a mentor - or a boss.  I was always fascinated by artists, monks, and the types.  I cherish the living relics - and to me - even if this way of learning architecture is by default - anti- trendy, NOT fashionable, it's fulfilling to me.  I like the personal factor and it makes me want to give a good fight.  "design like I give a damn"

And so - working as a part of a huge system or factory, like school - can be fun, but too competitive and empty for me.

I had been working at this 3person office since last June.  It's about 9 months now - and my boss and I are establishing some kind of connection - finally.  It was crazy when I had first started- worked a crazy lot of hours - 12, 14 hour days.  Because my boss was not nice to me, and kept dumping things on my feat at 5:30pm.  Of course I tried to please him.  But was mostly scared of him.  Especially because the fate of the previous Asian girl was scary-typical.  She was sort of in tears most of the time and ended up quitting.  My co-worker said that he hates women.  And seeing how he talks to and about our female clients - I BELIEVED it.

But somehow - now - my boss had taken up my casual ways of speaking.  Slipping 'cool' and 'awesome' in his vocabulary.  I had gotten pissed at him last Friday when he tried to make me stay late to meet with him.  I think I snapped and just told him that I have to leave promptly.  I don't know if I can be a better architect than him - probably not.  But I realized that I've snubbed him and an opportunity to learn - because of my preoccupation with other parts of my crap life hunting for love.

So time to refocus again.  The kind of architect I want to be?  Is NOT what I thought when I was a student...  It's kind of silly to think of a lazy fat architect - and respectable?  Who am I trying to win the respect of?

What KIND of architecture I want to practice?  I think that is a bit more clearer - and lets just say that there will never be a TED talk associated with REIKO.

Broken but not quitting

Saturday - hung over - and thinking about true love.

I have my hang up on mr. B - who is now more like a fictional character in my mind.  I am not sure when, but at one point, and it was in the morning when I woke up most likely beside mr. B - I thought that I will probably die with him.  I thought that I would like to grow old with him.  And we talked about that - about being an old Asian woman with permed hair and him with a huntch back of some sort.

And another time - it all quit.  We broke up.

I texted my friend, "either

A.  My definition of true love was wrong
B.  The definition was right but the person was wrong
C.  Or I had given up and so I was wrong"

Then she texted back saying that maybe we had grown apart.

Ugh, her response is so NOT romantic.

I feel broken today.  Ugly as shit.  But to quote dan savage "what ev's"

I'm crying my eyes out right now - and I don't know why - I guess I feel kind of stupid - and I don't even know if I believe in love and if that's even something impt.  I am making a big deal out of nothing.   I'm hoping that tomorrow, I'll be able to run a full 4 miler again.

Happiness

I listened to the TED podcast on Happiness by Barry Schwartz and glanced over a book on Happiness by, "I-forgot-who-the-author-was".  Happiness is something that most people seek out - it's something that I had been pondering about - BECAUSE - the definition is super nebulous.

When I graduated in 2007, I asked all of my classmates what they want out of their lives.  We were freshly beginning on a new venture, new life.  So it was time for new goal setting.  Every single one of them had answered the same thing - "to be happy".  So this is the goal that each one of them had, that was the beacon of their aspirations.  It's the exact same aspiration, but the outcome was so different in everyone.  One girl had worked for a world renowned landscape architect (and killed her self for it, not literally), one worked for a world renowned architect, another became unemployed FOREVER, another got herself into a committed relationship and quit her job... another moved back home with her parents... But they all wanted 'happiness'. It's not like they answered - 'I want to get a job', 'I want a hubby', 'I want...'

So what is happiness?  I know when I'm unhappy - for sure.  It's like worrying about rent, worrying about your parents, worrying about your future, about disliking where you live, disliking the coffee you're drinking, being in pain from a disease, pain from break-up.  And I'm pretty sure that I can make myself happy in any given situation with effort.

Happiness - if easy, is just a state of mind.  If difficult, is unattainable.  It's pretty easy to make yourself content with the given situation.  It's easy to give-up, and be happy with being a ho-bum.  What's difficult is to change things that's making you unhappy (and this is probably the wrong way to go).

So Barry Schwartz said that having too many choices paralyzes you.  And although you may end up with a better solution after searching for the best, you end up being less satisfied, less happy.  He talked about searching for a pair of jeans, and the whole ordeal he had to go through.  He ended up with the best fitting pair of jeans EVER, but was soooooo not thrilled about it.

I don't know, I DON'T buy what he's saying.  I am compelled to DISAGREE.  I feel like the things that I appreciate the most are things that had a journey, traces, and effort to get.  I like to work for it.  But, I guess I love labor.  I think the thing is in the grey zone.  Somewhere in-between.  I don't want to kill myself to get to the goals, but I'd have to try, and also be happy trying, be happy with the doing, the labor.

This is what Eleanor Roosevelt said about happiness:

“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.”

My mantra this year is "I'm ok, you're ok".  Usually I'm freaking out about stupid shit.  My acupuncturist clairvoyant friend, Ms. C read my i-Ching a long time ago.  The gua was the Chinese character for 'breathe'.

I just emailed my friend in Hong Kong this morning.
"a.  My artwork is shit.
    b.  My architecture is shit.
    c.  But I'm super happy right now.  "
I don't know where this sense of happiness is coming from - because I haven't felt so scattered and in-pieces for a long time, and so many uncompleted goals... BUT...

School Night

It's Afrolicious and DJ Rai at the Elbow Room tonight!  Let's go! weeeeeeeeee~  

http://www.elbo.com/Calendar.php

More Advice on How to Proceed with Dating

"There's nothing wrong with sleeping around if what you want to do is sleep around. If what you want to do is build a relationship it's likely to get in the way in a big way unless you and the person you meet and click with want to do some poly thing. People like to talk about this but there really aren't many people who can do connection/intimacy at the same time as they're doing a sleep around merry go round. 
Didn't sound to me like you wanted that kind of thing so that leaves, generally speaking, two ways of going: one is date/sleep around, maybe have a few you see semi regularly, maybe not. There's plenty of sex and different fun and/or interesting dates to be had. If that's what you want go and get it. THe thing is though is that we only have so much time and energy and our spreading our time and sexual attention around means, at best, a real limit on potential depth of connection: being up front means the other person will likely be doing the same and have less time and space for you. Keeping it quiet means even less connection and the potential of someone feeling mislead as generally monogamy is assumed, at least after a few times.

Again, if what you want is adventure, go for it! But what you've implied is that you want more, including a child. For most people that means focusing on someone and building a connection with them. When you were at my house you and I and Eliza talked about a guy you're dating that you already know "isn't good for you" is what you said. So I think you should move on. There are plenty of people out there. What I've mostly done is go out on a few dates and if it feels right, go for it. Men and women of various demographics play by all sorts of rules, fairly and unfairly, Im not being moralistic more practical. There' only some much time and we all only have so much emotional space and energy. I think if you wan to get involved with someone it makes more sense to focus on one at a time. Spend time with them, sleep with them, ask for what you want, see if you like or can deal with what they want, see if you like them and feel like they appreciate you. Maybe it will stick, maybe you find you don't like them or want different things, maybe you feel more like a friend and not like a lover, who knows? 
I think I can speak generally for most straight guys in Saying that if a woman is dating around we're not going to take her seriously and will be out doing as much of that as we can too. We might like her, maybe even love her, and be nice and giving to some degree but not really invest much. If we've shown up with some sincere intention and it turns out she's been checking us out while still playing the field we're hurt and it may be a deal breaker.

So Leiko if you want to date around do it and have fun. If want more/deeper then go out on dates until you find one worth checking out and give them a shot for a few months. If it's not right your motor will still be warm to jump back in.

I think all this starts with you being really clear about what you want."

JOB POSTING

"We're Hiring. And how. Know a good writer in #SF? Give us a shout: inhk.us/ZrQbel" a job posting for a writer, a self-starter...  if my grammar was any good....