My Happiness

When I was writing about that Happy documentary, I started thinking about what I'd like to do some day.
It would be awesome to have a big house with a bunch of awesome people living in it. We could all split the chores, and act crazy together, and cook and do creative stuff. That would be awesome. I just used the word "awesome" a lot.

But most of all, I want to be useful. To do something that I love doing, but which is also helpful and makes a difference.
Like writing, to reach people. Writing, and maybe giving speeches too about the things that I find most important.
I'd better stop before I go into a lot of sappy stuff.

Would you guys like to join me in a giant house with lots of cool people? ^-^


Oh yeah. I should try to find a picture. Something at least partially relevant... Gotta keep reminding myself about that.
Okay, got one.
Now it's off to do more homework. Bleh. I've been trying to catch up all day. I hope I don't get too behind...

Painting Practice

I ended up painting three pictures in Portland.
And I did very little writing... There's always too much going on there to be able to focus on writing.
Or homework... I'm pretty behind on homework now, so I'll have to work really hard to catch up before Tuesday. Sigh.

Anyway, here's a practice painting I tried to do of Fang, following a tutorial fro an artist on DA.


I also finished the lineart for the next Retriever pair - Tuan and Tivoli. So now I just have to color them. Actually, I drew a lot. That's something I can do when the TV's on, or when my cousin's hanging over my shoulder. Heheh. She likes watchign me draw though.
Now I just have to color all of them... Eventually
The two other paintings I did - one is of my rabbit Alaska, and the other is a picture I took of the first hawk I released. Both of them were practicing painting from photographs. They turned out a lot better thna I thought they would, which is a nice surprise. Then again, usually when I go back to look at something I did in the past (even a couple weeks before) I stop liking it. Sigh.
Which reminds me... I drew Youka a little while ago, but I haven't given her a background yet. I was going to make a nice one to go with the picture, but I stopped caring so much about the picture (for the reasons mentioned above). So I'll probably just stick it over some random photo I took.

When I'm 24~

It's my birthday today. And I'm 24. Heh. I feel like I should at least have a real job, or something...
A couple days ago I was chasing my cousin around in this big indoor play area, and a couple other little girls joined in. One of them asked how old I was. She said she thought I was 16. Heheh. People either think I'm a lot younger than usual, or a lot older. My cousin's girlfriend thought I was almost 30.

Maaan, in the past year I've taken more plane rides than... I don't know.
And The past few months have contained half of my total trips to Portland.

It's strange. It almost doesn't feel like my birthday, because this is the first time I haven't been at home for my birthday. But we had cake and everything, and there were lots of people. When Tashi got home, it was 12, I think (Including Baby Rowan). There was no cake left. Heheh.
Then again there's always lots of people at this house.
I think one of the reasons it didn't feel like a birthday was because I didn't open a single present I'm not saying it';s bad, it's just different). A coupe days ago, my aunt and Grandma bought a new coat for me - a really nice one. I've got plenty of jackets, but nothing that nice.
And yesterday Mom got me a new hat. Nicer than any of the others I have.
There were even 2 other hats that were really pretty that I almost want to get...

Heaven help me... it's all clothes.....
Don't let the clothes monsters eat me TT^TT

I did get a piece of fabric (a bandana? I'm not exactly sure) with koi on it. I don't even know if that counts though, because I mainly snuck the $3 thing into the cart when we stopped at a Japanese market.
But Mom, Jill, Grandma, and my little cousin Sera all painted/drew me fancy birthday cards. That was nice.

I've done 2 full paintings here, and I started a 3rd. I'll have to scan them when I get home.
I never practice painting, but my paintings all look so much nicer than my other pictures...
And Sera's so much better at drawing than I was at her age. O__O

Spring Break

Tomorrow, at about 4:30 AM, I'm getting up early and going to Portland with Mom and Grandma.
It'll be fun, but waking up that early is painful. Early mornings are one of my banes.

I really gotta start adding more pictures to my blog. I used to dump pictures all over the place, because it was fun. I don't do that anymore. I just put up walls of text. And after looking at other blogs and websites and power point slides, I realize that images really are good for viewers. So I gotta try to remember to add more.
Hmmm... how to find something relevant...
Spring flowers~

Peach blossoms.
I went to a garden on Tuesday with Mom. There's a collage of flower pictures on my DA.

And I saw The Wind Rises for a third time. I had to make Nick watch it, because he wants to make airplanes.

Happy

I watched a documentary a few days ago, called Happy. And it's about what makes people happy~ I thought I'd write about some of the interesting things it talked about.

What are the general causes of happiness?
Apparently 50% of the factors that contribute to happiness are from genetics. Which seems odd to me. I should look into exactly how genetics have such a huge impact. Unless you have a genetic disease or disorder, I guess.
The circumstances of your life - your job, social status, the amount of money you earn, and your health account for 10%. Only 10%.
Which means that 40% of comes from you trying to be happy. Doing stuff that you enjoy, going for walks, staying positive, ex.

Money. If you have enough money to meet your basic needs, then any additional money is not important for your happiness. There's isn't a difference in happiness between rich people and people who have what they need. Happiness has not increased over the past 50 years, even though people have more money.
And no matter how much money you make, you'll get used to that lifestyle and end up wanting more. Just remember, more money won't make you more happy.

Religion can make people happy too. But not always. For example, religions that think everyone else is going to hell besides them are actually less happy than average people. Hmm.

Flow is how you feel when you're doing something that you wish could go on forever. This could be because you're really into your work, or when you're having a really good time with people lose to you, or anywhere. Flow is a nice feeling~

People who are happy have close friends and family. You don't have to really like everyone, but good company means happy people.

You know how excited you are when something really awesome happens? Well, that feeling fades pretty fast. But you know what? If something really bad happens, that means that you can get over those awful feelings pretty fast. I'm surprisingly good at that. I guess I have to be, since I'm studying environmental problems. XP
Being happy means that you are able to recover quickly from adversity. That does not mean that you don't feel awful when something bad happens. It means that you are able to get over it and go on with your life and find happiness again.

After your teenage years, you start losing parts of your brain that you don't make use of. This includes parts of your brain that feel happiness. So, theoretically if you don't be happy often after you're a teenager, you'll start to lost the ability to be happy. O__O
Be happy! Be happy lots!

Out of all of the developed countries, Japan is the least happy. Actually, that doesn't surprise me, considering what I've learned about it. I always wondered, if they work so hard, how do they find time to have fun and be with people? Since WWII, japan has accomplished amazing stuff. But it's been at the cost of their happiness, from working so hard that they lose time for everything else. Including their families and friends. Remember what I said about happy people having great friends/family?
In fact, people in Japan will actually work themselves to death. It even has its own word. Karoshi. They work so hard that they drop dead (or commit suicide).
Working hard is good. But it's not good to work so hard that you lose everything else.
What happens when the people of a country aren't happy?

Well, Bhutan doesn't want to find out. They recently started something called GNH, instead of GNP. It's Gross National Happiness. That means that they're not only focused on making more money. They want to focus on making the people happy. They don't develop everything to try to "keep up" with other countries. They leave older things that are important for the people - temples and forests ad such. They don't want only fleeting pleasure, but lasting happiness.
Denmark is actually the happiest country on Earth. I should visit there. They have free education and free healthcare. That must relieve a looot of stress. O___O Another interesting thing is that a lot of people live together in co-housing units - more than anywhere else on earth. Their housing unit is a little community. They share responsibilities, so you'd only have to cook a couple times a month, for example.
Being happy can make you healthy. Despite unhappiness in lots of Japan, Okinawa seems like a pretty good place, considering an unusual number of very old people live there. Healthy old people. People who are over 100 years old wake up and work in the garden every morning. They're always active, they get plenty of sleep and eat small portions of food. And they have great, supportive communities of people. Their community has activities where everyone in the village, of all ages, interact together.
Hmm. I'll have to try all that out. Heheh.

Basically, cooperating with people makes you happy. This is what I was talking about with Jiro, from The Wind Rises.
Except in America, they drill into us that we have to compete with each other. The powerful people are the people who stomp on everyone else weaker than them.
Thus we end up with video games where we kill people, running over them with cars or shooting them.
And we end up with kids at school bullying each other because they're not tall enough, or they're the wrong color or the don't like the same things you do.
Oh boy. How fun. I probably would have gotten a lot more of that if I didn't fight back at the worst ones. It all went away once I had good friends around me though.
Compassion. Being kind to others, whether or not you know them. That is what makes people happy. Doing random acts of kindness is great. Meditating on compassion is actually more powerful than anti-depressants.
And doing stuff that is worthwhile will make you feel good.

Basically, having wonderful people around you, being kind to others, and doing something useful.
So, go out and be as happy as possible!

Because:

Smiling is infectious. you catch it like the flu
When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too~
I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin.
When he smiled, I realized I'd passed it on to him.
I thought about that smile and realized its worth.
A single smile just like mine could travel round the earth.
So if you feel a smile begin, don't leave it undetected.
Let's start an epidemic quick and get the world infected!

Goodness... I memorized that poem in middle school. It was on a poster in the locker room, and I learned it for some reason. It's only one of 2 peoms I actually remembered for fun, and still remember both. How the heck is it still in my head? O__O

Okay, off to do homework. Must carry some happiness with me to get me through it. ^-^'

The Wind is Still Rising

(I tried to remember the quote from the movie to use as the post title, but I'm probably off).
Anyway, I saw the Wind Rises again with Dad, since he wanted to see it.
I'm talking about this movie again?
Yep. Cause I still want to talk about it~

Mainly I wanted to talk about Jiro. I liked him the first time, of course. But the second time through, I like him a lot more. Because of his way of helping people without any expectation of thanks or payback.
Not enough people are like that. If you thought a train was going to blow up, would you stop and carry a woman to safety, because she had a broken leg? Or fight off bullies from a little kid. Or offer your dinner to a group of kids on the street? Or wrestle with a wild umbrella?
Most people seem so wrapped up in their own lives now. So few are willing to do selfless things for people that they don't know. If everyone could care more about strangers, I think there would be a lot less unhappiness. I keep thinking about the little stories I've heard about the joy brought about by these "random acts of kindness" (Actually I'm in the process of writing a post that talks about this a little more).

Anyway, enough gushing on that fact.
More that I admire about Jiro's character. His ability to work so hard for his dream. It made me really excited to get into work that I'm so passionate about. Something that I can throw everything into, and feel so comeplete once I'm done.
Ughhh, if I didn't have so many articles to write, I'd be writing my story now. Then again... maybe I will anyway! Who cares about homework~ (It's mostly reading more research articles anyway).

And finally, Jiro's immediate willingness to marry a woman with a disease like tuberculosis (which I don't think they could cure at the time, and is contagious). He must have known that it might be a fleeting relationship. But he was willing to accept that so the two of them could be happy together, even if only for a short time.

And the last thing I wanted to talk about is dreams.


I love the dream scenes in the movie. And I can really relate to them. I've had many dreams where I met with people that I admire (including a dream where I was talkign to Miyazaki).
It kind of sucks though. During some of these dreams, I'll convince myself that it's real life. and that I'm actually talking to these people I look up to. And then I wake up and go #!#$@!. Heheh. My dream self must be pretty gullible.
What about you guys? Do you ever have dreams where you meet peopel you admire? Who is it?

Books books~ Books?

I got my Chinese garden book in the mail today~ Yaay for great reference pictures!
I have a pretty decent collection of books about China and Japan. I have a ones on Tibet and Korea too, and there's Vietnam and Thailand ones that I'd like to get (I keep hoping the price will drop).
I've still been trying to find some on the other Asian countries. I'll have to do another search.
Surprisingly I haven't run across any really good books on India. There wasn't much at my school library. And I haven't seen much in used bookstores. Do they keep them in a different place or something? I know more than usual about India, from Ananda. But it's been a significant gap in my research for Red Seeker.
And I just found an India book in the library catalog, so I'm gonna order that~ There's a good series of books on Asian cultures, but I haven't ordered any new ones in a while. I'll have to get back to those. But I like picture books too! Like my garden books. Ah well. I'll have to keep looking.

Useless Animation

I read something a little while ago about the "best animated picture" at the Oscars. Apparently the people who vote on the best films don't care about the animation. There were a bunch of comments of the voters saying how they hadn't even watched most of them, so they just voted for Frozen, because they'd heard of that one, or it was the only one they'd seen.
That's disgusting...
I'll be anything that more effort and thought went into The Wind Rises than 2/3 of those live-action films. And yet because they're "cartoons" people don't take them seriously.
Frozen was great. But if people had actually watched the rest of those movies, would there have been a different "best animated picture?"
Stupid Oscars...

What's Next?

I keep forgetting about my fanfic. I don't even know when I last posted a chapter. So despite all the other crud I could be writing, I'm working on a fanfic chapter. ^-^' This is one of the few chapters in this fanfic where I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just winging it. I haven't winged it in a long time, so it's fun to do again.
A fanfic doesn't require any heavy thought. I mean, obviously I think abotu it a lot. But I let a lot of details go that I would have to address on soemthign more serious. For example, for the three characters that are traveling together, two of them don't have much part in the action. Sorry, guys. ^-^' I'm trying to include them more. They just don't fit very well in this arc.
This also lets me loose some of the ideas that have been gathering dust in my head. I'm afraid I'll lose track of my goals with this thing if I go too long without lookign at it.
For Katani, I'm mainly adding and changing stuff.
And Ashlyn's story is pretty heavy to write.
So this is a nice light thing to write. It's a good change of pace.

Something I've been wondering about recently. I've always known what I would do for my next fanfic. Except now I don't. Even if I go onto another Pokémon fanfic in the Kalos region, I have no ideas for that either. Nothing that would take more than a couple chapters, at least. And nothing specifically for the Kalos region, unless some really awesome new games come out, giving me a flush of new ideas. I'm doubting it though.
I like fanfictions. And I could theoretically write a lot of stuff with Fern. Exept while Fern's stories mean a great deal to me, they're not the kind of thing anyone else would want to read. And by that, I mean that I've seen other people do things similar to this, and I've never liked them.
I'd be sad to stop writing fanfics, but unless I get some really good ideas, I might stop. It's not like I don't have tons of other original stories to write. But it's fun to write for the people that follow me on fanfic. It's so exciting getting comments, and talkign to people that have followed me for a while. TT^TT People that actually like reading my stuff, but don't know anything about me or my original writing.

Otaku?

I randomly ran across an article about something Miyazaki said, and then found a second post explaining it a bit more.
Basically, anime sucks a lot right now because it's only appealing to fans, instead of actually creating real people and stories.
Which got me thinking about a writer's relationship to the audience through a book or movie.
It can be awesome when a creator does something to reach out to fans.
A silly example that I find hilarious is actually from My Little Pony. That one pony Derpy, became huge among fans. So huge that they actually added her into a couple of the episodes.
Stuff like that, little hints that make some people really happy and are unnoticed by others, can be an awesome way of appealing to an audience.
I myself have gotten very excited over tiny things like that (Wolverine's 3-second cameo in the X-Men Origins movie).
But at the same time, it's not good to pander to fans too much. Because here's the thing. Not everyone likes the same stuff. And just because some fans are louder than others does not mean that everyone else agrees with them. Fans aren't the ones in charge of creating something. They don't know the story and the characters as well as the writer does. And they haven't studied about creating stories.
For example, in my fanfiction, there's one guy that keeps asking me to add in the legendary Pokémon that haven't made an appearance in my story yet. Except I don't want to force random legendary Pokémon into my story unless there's a good reason. And I've had a couple people ask me to include their OCs. I don't mind giving a couple cameos, but they don't always fit into the plots that I have in mind.
So many movies/series I've been seeing recently have all felt exactly the same. There's no depth to them, it's all just a lot of fighting, and inevitably some romance thrown in. I've been trying to watch some of the super hero movies that build up the the Avengers. But all of the movies in that series all seem the same to me. Sure, they each have an underlying message. Which is good, but it takes up maybe 5% of the movie with the rest of it just fighting and crud. Sigh. The new Star Trek was like that too.

And another way of appealing to fans. Just because the book/movie is made for an audience does not mean that the audience POV should overshadow the motivations of all the characters and plot.
This is a rant I've been wanting to do for a while, about this topic. The end of season 2 of Sherlock was great.
And season 3, episode 1 where they explained it was really lame.
And all of the reasons for that seem to go back to the fact that they were appealing too much to fans, and not focusing on what made sense to the story.
There were a couple little things, which wouldn't have bothered me if they weren't combined with the big problem. The little things being the theories about how Sherlock planned the fall. And then we got what appeared to be the real explanation, given to a person that he'd have no reason to tell. Which means that it might not actually be true. That wouldn't bother me either, if it really wasn't true. Except it must have been true, and they're just trying to confuse the viewer. Unless the writers couldn't think of a good explanation, so they wouldn't give us one at all (Which is unforgivable if it's true).
No, this is the thing that bothered me. (Spoilers coming up, by the way.) The entire fall was staged for the sole purpose of screwing with John. It wasn't to fool the snipers, which was the only real reason to begin with. Because apparently they were "discouraged" from their job. No. The entire thing was planned just so they could make John think that Sherlock was dead. Why? There was absolutely no reason to keep him in the dark, when everyone else knew. Except to show off to the audience and make them wonder how it happened. I get that Sherlock needed to go undercover to break up that organization. But why did that need to be kept from John?
I'd want to strangle Sherlock too.
And on top of that, Sherlock doesn't let John apologize on his own. Instead he goes "ooh, you're engaged and everything, but I'm going to pretend like you're going to die just to force you to apologize!"
Sherlock may not be the best with people, but those two things are waaay beyond what anyone should do to a person. Especially their best (and only) friend.

Except Nicole says that the next episode is really good, so I'm looking forward to watching that with Mom.