The Happiness Thread

[turquoise70]

what makes me happy is that in the past few months I have made two friends who have become so special to me that we consider ourselves siblings. i now have two big brothers and two big sisters instead of one of each!

[TheSilenceEchoes]

what makes me happy is that in the past few months I have made two friends who have become so special to me that we consider ourselves siblings. i now have two big brothers and two big sisters instead of one of each!

that's awesome. it's one of the greatest things in life of not the greatest.

[asymmetrical head]

alright... i'm happy again! I was pretty depressed from the end of 09 to about a month ago. I guess losing my job actually made things better for us if that makes any sense at all! But all in all, I've been my most happiest right now than I've been in a long time.

[turquoise70]

what makes me happy is that in the past few months I have made two friends who have become so special to me that we consider ourselves siblings. i now have two big brothers and two big sisters instead of one of each!

that's awesome. it's one of the greatest things in life of not the greatest.

daaaang, love your new avatar! I saw the hair coloring already but that picture really does it justice!

[Spenner]

After being depressed for so long, so much makes me happy these days. I've taught myself to fall in love with beautiful imagery and music more than anything else, and I've been surrounded by so much of it, feels good to be alive these days...

[747Music]

I have bipolar disorder, so I get depressed really easily. But I've been feeling great lately. Getting nice warm weather certainly helps too.

[Spenner]

I have bipolar disorder, so I get depressed really easily. But I've been feeling great lately. Getting nice warm weather certainly helps too.

Same here, and this amazing weather makes me feel so good. It was a long winter this year

This weather plus finally having free time due to school being done = happy times

[portiss]

Today is the best day I've had in ages.


I just heard I will get a contract at my work, so I'm assured of a decent job, plus I've just heard that I will be having my own appartment soon!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS.

[TheSilenceEchoes]

let's all take a little time to look at what we can be thankful for. I was extremely unhappy a couple days back because i couldn't pay rent for this and last month and had to ask my parents (AGAIN) to help me out.
But now i'm in Romania at a project where my brother works and feel a little bit ashamed. Those gypsy kids over there (called Roma's) have almost nothing. They live in a one room 'house' made of wood and plastic, where they can hardly fit in two beds, with their entire family. They hardly have any food. Their parents don't have much knowledge about how to give their kids love or attention, so they hardly ever get hugged and there is a lot of sexual abuse (the kids don't even know it's abuse, they think it's normal (and i think the parents too)...). Because of lack of stimulation, attention and love in their early years their development is very poorly. They are being discriminated against and get no attention in school. Because of that they don't understand what the classes are about... effecting that 12year olds most of the time still can't read and write. They have no future except the same life as their parents, so find money through stealing or working on the land (nothing wrong with the latter but it just doesn't pay well especially in the winter there is hardly no work)..
My brother along with some other people there have started a preschool for little kids to prepare them for school. Also every day kids can come there after school to get classes in which they actually get attention and can learn to read write and calculate. A lot of kids come there every day, even though their parents don't stimulate it, because they don't see the use of school... when i came there all the kids ran to me and hugged me. They are so happy with the little attention and love they get..
It's great to see how this group of Dutchies (and a Canadian i think) work together with some motivated Romanians to give these kids a future. There are also more projects for teenage / young mothers in the make. And the church project is also growing. One of the guys had a great job in NL and gave up everything, sold his house and decided to give himself fulltime for this job. He preaches in the church where the gypsies come and find a lot of hope and healing, he helps in the school etc etc etc. I can learn so much from all these selfless people! And the kids are so sweet... To see them smile makes me realize with how little they manage to still smile. I can learn from them.
Just something i wanted to share. I'm gonna take pictures these coming days, so perhaps i'll post some.

[bleak.]

climbed Snowdon today (the highest mountain in Wales and England) incredible experience. i'm beaming with happiness!

[Julian Candy]

I'm happy because I just watched this video.

[Techboy]

This post is coming out of nowhere and I know people don't like receiving advice particularly if they have already heard it.
I am not going to say what kind of shit I was in but I was in a lot of shit. Almost like tomorrow's harvest came out just in time to narrate such shit which is why I attach myself still.

Happiness comes from creating it.
1. duties to self 2. when duties to self are completed engage in duties to other people.
I didn't realise the cure to unhappiness was making other people happy and collecting the leftover sentiment for so long.
I am cured and the polar opposite of myself a year ago.

yeah man. I realised, I dunno, just over a year ago that you can't just wait for what you want to show up on your doorstep one day. i went out and looked for things. i missed making music, so i bought a microkorg. i missed playing drums, so i started playing drums again. i missed coding, so i got a job coding. i wanted to be in a band, so ive participated in a few musical projects over the year and have plans for more to come. whatever. my life's 10x better now than when i just lay on the couch watching futurama hoping that one day i'd wake up and all my problems would be solved. and now i'm probably a much better person to be around, so i can go out and have more fun than i did before. it's an important part of growing up i reckon, it's felt somewhat like the "final piece of the jigsaw" for me. or when i think about it, maybe it's more like the first piece of the jigsaw.

here's a quote which seems related, although its more about art than just life in general.

Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will - through work - bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art [idea].' And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you'll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you [did] today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere.

[Valotonin]

yeah man. I realised, I dunno, just over a year ago that you can't just wait for what you want to show up on your doorstep one day. i went out and looked for things. i missed making music, so i bought a microkorg. i missed playing drums, so i started playing drums again. i missed coding, so i got a job coding. i wanted to be in a band, so ive participated in a few musical projects over the year and have plans for more to come. whatever. my life's 10x better now than when i just lay on the couch watching futurama hoping that one day i'd wake up and all my problems would be solved. and now i'm probably a much better person to be around, so i can go out and have more fun than i did before. it's an important part of growing up i reckon, it's felt somewhat like the "final piece of the jigsaw" for me. or when i think about it, maybe it's more like the first piece of the jigsaw.

I understand completely. There are few things as spiritually satisfying as fufilling the need to create music. I am so happy you bought a synth instead of saying 'I realised I missed making music so I downloaded fl studio on my laptop'.
Part of it for me was getting hold of a lot of decent old equipment to make music manually that equated to less than the cost of a touch screen phone. Using your body to create the music is always the way the energy is transferred from your mind to the soundwaves. I was one of the sit lying down watching every episode of the simpsons and futurama in order waiting for things to get better people also.

It is indeed the first piece of an infinitely more beautiful jigsaw as you said.
I couldn't find a better way to describe it

[Cupz]

*aghum* what is wrong with starting to make music by downloading fl studio? Or audacity? Or Super ProducerTM Kids Edition? In fact, I think you can do allot more with a pentium 2 running FL8 then a single microkorg, which is only a few steps away from being a computer strapped to a midicontroler. Not hating the microkorg, but its not "better" then a computer with a daw on it.

I am really happy lately for some contrasting reasons to Mark. I finally feel no longer guilty about my future and what I should do with my life, even if that future would mean doing nothing but sit under a tree for the rest of my life. I feel like just relaxing on my back floating down a river called life. I try to learn about myself by expressing myself to myself and project that on to others. I'm starting to care less and less about everything that involves money and hate. This is quite a contrast to the "Oh no there is no time, I will end up depressed that I did nothing with my life, I need to become something succesfull quick, I'm not doing enough, FOR MOMMA!" ideas that raced my head before. I feel comfortable doing nothing but make music, games and pretty pictures all day and nothing can or will stop me from doing nothing but that.

[Valotonin]

*aghum* what is wrong with starting to make music by downloading fl studio? Or audacity? Or Super ProducerTM Kids Edition? In fact, I think you can do allot more with a pentium 2 running FL8 then a single microkorg, which is only a few steps away from being a computer strapped to a midicontroler. Not hating the microkorg, but its not "better" then a computer with a daw on it.

You are right to a certain extent (in my opinion so it is all subjective). Maybe just the fact that the samples are not of the users creation most of the time and the fact that every note is hit too cleanly and too precisely by computers take away the personality and human element.

I would like to see the results if every single sample in one of your creations was from an organic recording you made and triggered by hand as opposed to pre-cued. Your musical ability would go so much further. From what I listened to a while ago you actually have a talent.

[Techboy]

*aghum* what is wrong with starting to make music by downloading fl studio? Or audacity? Or Super ProducerTM Kids Edition? In fact, I think you can do allot more with a pentium 2 running FL8 then a single microkorg, which is only a few steps away from being a computer strapped to a midicontroler. Not hating the microkorg, but its not "better" then a computer with a daw on it.

fair point, if you're using VST or synth presets you have an identical issue; but you can program your own patches on a DAW with the same or better results than on digital hardware. I just like having fancy toys to sit on my desk, so i got a synth rather than a midi controller. to an extent the learning curve is smaller too, don't need to map midi controllers to parameters and so on. just twiddle teh knob.

I am really happy lately for some contrasting reasons to Mark. I finally feel no longer guilty about my future and what I should do with my life, even if that future would mean doing nothing but sit under a tree for the rest of my life. I feel like just relaxing on my back floating down a river called life. I try to learn about myself by expressing myself to myself and project that on to others. I'm starting to care less and less about everything that involves money and hate. This is quite a contrast to the "Oh no there is no time, I will end up depressed that I did nothing with my life, I need to become something succesfull quick, I'm not doing enough, FOR MOMMA!" ideas that raced my head before. I feel comfortable doing nothing but make music, games and pretty pictures all day and nothing can or will stop me from doing nothing but that.

i'm not sure our reasons are so contrasting! in fairness, making music, games and pretty pictures *is* doing something. i don't ever expect to actually make profit writing music or playing drums for example and it's essentially dumb luck that i can make money coding. all of those things are essentially artistic pursuits to me, and i don't get stressed out over anything. when i DID get stressed, it when there was rent to pay - and working in a shop wasn't covering it. so i ditched that life. ;P

[nameeman333]

I’m so Glad...
I’m so Glad...
I'm Glad, I'm Glad, I'm Glad.

[turquoise70]

*aghum* what is wrong with starting to make music by downloading fl studio? Or audacity? Or Super ProducerTM Kids Edition? In fact, I think you can do allot more with a pentium 2 running FL8 then a single microkorg, which is only a few steps away from being a computer strapped to a midicontroler. Not hating the microkorg, but its not "better" then a computer with a daw on it.

You are right to a certain extent (in my opinion so it is all subjective). Maybe just the fact that the samples are not of the users creation most of the time and the fact that every note is hit too cleanly and too precisely by computers take away the personality and human element.

I would like to see the results if every single sample in one of your creations was from an organic recording you made and triggered by hand as opposed to pre-cued. Your musical ability would go so much further. From what I listened to a while ago you actually have a talent.

Wow... I didn't realize this was still a sentiment people had. Until like, earlier this year, every single thing I ever did was pre-cued in Fruity Loops. And people here think oddly highly of Boreal Network and that stuff. So y'know.

[Valotonin]

The majority of people through exposure can take comfort in synthetic worlds and soundscapes now.
But if people still recorded organically music would still be very personal and more connected to what is natural. Also not limited to the same kinds of synthetic sounds whilst giving the illusion of musical freedom.

We should talk about happiness again though. Sorry for letting this thread stray from the positive.

[2020k]

I saw Janet Jackson with my Mother at the end of November. I'd been asking her to see Janet since I was about 8 years old. I'm 28 now, so it was a bucket list item for me and I'm happy, still, that we got to experience it together. It goes down as one of the fondest memories of my life thus far.