Measuring Happiness

 In recent months I've been adapting to not having anything to do.  Well, that's not quite true.  In reality I've been trying to work out what life without work is like and what my next journey is going to look like.  The strangest thing to me is these dream / flashbacks that I've been having.

I got rid of a lot of the reliving of my past perhaps 14 or more years ago when it was becoming a problem for me.  When I was over analysing anything and everything and I, overnight, banished a lot of the pouring over my past and the what if and so on.  That works quite well, the odd time that I slip back but I know the signs and I stop the rot before it sets in.

The recent things are like a moment ago when I looked back or flashed back to my early days in College and how happy I was back then.  Enthusiastic, motivated to learn new things and I had a great lecturer it was so different from school being treated as an adult and everything was new and exciting.  Another flashback is at break time, at another college, having fun with new friends, going to the local park for lunch and getting along with everyone.  It was all new and you were suddenly out there, in the big world and doing for want of another word, 'stuff' you had your own money and your own freedom. So I get these flashbacks and I sort of get what they are implying for my today by looking back at those halcyon days of my youth.  

Some though are strange as there's no rhyme or reason for recalling these scenes somewhat like Harry Potter's Pensive scenes a past experience is replayed.  In my case these are apparently random nothing scenes.  I have one where we (my college colleagues) and I are in my battered old Mark1 Cortina and we are driving not far from Wandsworth past a parade of shops, a double decker bus is on the opposite side of the road and we drive across a pedestrian zebra crossing and continue our journey.  That's it, that is the scene perhaps someone is directing me where to go. We are again at lunch break from college so perhaps off to a pub somewhere?   In another I am parking the car at Putney but that's all of the snippet.  There's not a clue why I would recall these at all.  There's no incident surrounding them so that is what I find strange.

So back to the subject as I have segued a bit.  Happiness when I was younger seems to be a freedom things, earning and playing, no real worries, having a smoke and a drink, being with friends and having fun.  Work was hard but also fun, playing hard and working hard.  Had my own money at last and was in those great years when the music was brilliant and the weekends lasted from Thursday night until Sunday late evening.  Of late, I've not been having fun nor have I just gone our and enjoyed myself like I used to. You grow up, you get obligations and responsibilities, you get seriously ill, you recover your health but not your mental state, you have to work with arseholes and pillocks and then realise you've worked with those sorts of people all your life.  You despair whether the human race will ever learn its lessons, give it's head a wobble and grow the f*** up?

So, I need to get back to how I used to be where everything was exciting and new.