The Happy Gardener

Where did the carefree days go? Now, if I spend an evening just watching TV and reading, I feel like like I'm forgetting something or just plain guilty. Anyways, here I am. You'll be happy to know that even though I haven't been working out as much as I'd hoped or writing as much,  I am making reasonable progress on the other items on the year's bucket list.  C & I have the basic planning for the India trip done and I finally re-started Slaughterhouse Five ( I started this a loong time ago, read about 10 pages and then got distracted). Aaaand, I actually made a couple of new recipes this year - a veggie pasta (with much help from C) and a white-radish-and-fenugreek-leaves recipe, all by my self.  I think I am taking after my Mom in making random recipes up based on what veggies we have at home. Of course, I have a secret power she didn't - Google! I should tell you about the very nice day I had last week. I had a bad cold and sore throat and decided to ...

And so it begins. I was reading an article a few days ago which talked about some studies on happiness. These psychologists found that happiness depends on three basic needs being met - autonomy, competence and relatedness. (We clearly don't see eye to eye , me and the psychologists, 'cause I think the basic needs are 70 degree weather, dark chocolate and high speed internet). So I spent some time ruminating on this. I don't think I would have picked such a mundane set of words but it actually makes a lot of sense. At least, when I think of it in the context of work. You see, I've been spending a lot of time wondering what it is that I want out of my work life/career - mostly because I need to be in unending meetings with excruciating people who's only agenda seems to be to get me to snap. And now that I think about it, these precisely are the characteristics I'd look for in any endeavor that I need to spend 8 hours of my day on : - Autonomy : I want to have...