Day One: Fanfic
Day Two: Friendships

Day Three: Mindfulness

So, um. Mindfulness is a Buddhist concept and practice that has been used in the last thirty or so years in Western psychology to treat and manage depression, chronic pain, and many other conditions. While I have read the work of some Buddhist writers on mindfulness -- in particular, Thich Nhat Hanh has a lot of very accessible work written with a Western audience in mind -- my knowledge of and attitude towards mindfulness is one of someone using it as a tool to treat depression, rather than a spiritual or religious process.

I'm not trying to disclaim my use of mindfulness, but I do want to put it in context. What I am trying is not to be hurtful or disrespectful. If I'm failing and you feel up to telling me, I will do my best to listen.

Mindfulness as I know it is a way of guiding one's thoughts and attention in a natural and non-judgmental manner. It can be meditation or simply being in the moment -- "washing dishes in order to wash dishes". I suspect a lot of you who've ever received CBT, DBT or other types of therapy will have been introduced to mindfulness exercises at one point or another.

The following are eight mindfulness exercises that work for me out of the many, many I've met over the last nine (nine? wow) years. I hope some of you can find something useful in some of them, whether or not you've met the idea before.

Finding a smile )

ETA: Great tip from [personal profile] anotherusedpage on this one: Smiling is not just about the mouth )

Flushing a smile through your body )

Naming colours )

Ten deep breaths )

Observe without judgment )

Mindfully doing the washing up )

Face massage )

Radical acceptance )
Rather than sit and fret all day about the referendum, I thought I might try another round of Eight Days of Happy. If you have access to my DW or my LJ, you can find the 2009 round linked in my sticky posts at the top of each journal. If not, you can find a copy of most of the posts at [personal profile] 8daysofhappy.

First up, fanfic! As before, it's easier for me to post 8x8 themed recs than to narrow the field down to eight favourites. Not as before, I'd like to invite you to join me in the comments! Please, come, share your recs (or not, as the whim takes you), enjoy!

Day One: Fanfic


Eight ways to approach love )

Eight perfect codas )

Eight minds )

Eight cliches too much fun to miss )

Eight meetings of different worlds )

Eight times I clapped my hands and cried, Teeeeeeeeam! )

Eight stories I keep in my heart )

Eight times I couldn't stop smiling )
Eight days of happy, day eight!

Day Eight: Picspams

I think picspams are the single thing I miss the most from heavy bandom involvement.

-- Dogs )
-- Bandom )
-- Rachel Luttrell )
-- Lolcats )
-- Amanda Palmer )
-- Oxford )
-- Parminder Nagra )

And finally, the 64th happy of my eight days:

-- Baldness )

I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have! It's been immensely, immensely fun.
Eight days of happy, day six!

*deliberately lowers the bar again*

Day Six: Douglas Adams

Eight quotes! Because who's awesome? DNA is awesome!

-- Sunlight played along the River Cam. People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.
-- He was a rather overweight man who had been driving wearing a long leather coat and a rather ugly red hat, despite the discomfort this obviously involved. Kate warmed to him for it.
-- "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
"Er, five," said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"
-- A personal friend?" inquired the Vogon, who had heard the expression somewhere once and decided to try it out.
-- "Do you know," said Sergeant Gilks of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, blinking with suppressed emotion, "that when I arrive back here to discover one police officer guarding a sofa with a saw and another dismembering an innocent wastepaper basket I have to ask myself certain questions? And I have to ask them with the disquieting sense that I am not going to like the answers when I find them."
-- He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
-- Zaphod grinned two manic grins, sauntered over to the bar and bought most of it.
-- AMERICAN ATHEISTS: What message would you like to send to your Atheist fans?
DNA: Hello! How are you?

===

And a bonus moment of happy!

My brother, whom I love dearly, sent me a Science: It works, bitches t-shirt, which I love dearly, not least because it comes from him. But once you see the arrow you can't unsee it, so I was a little uncomfortable walking around wearing a slogan that asserts dominance by feminising the other party. It makes me deeply, deeply happy, therefore, that with the aid of some paper, sticky tape and a biro, I am now wearing a t-shirt that reads Science: It works, [unproblematic slur]. I'm going to have to redo this amendment every time I wash the shirt, so any suggestions for other alternatives will be greatly appreciated. *beams*
Eight days of happy, day five!

Day Five: Mind control

My brain and I are not BFF. You can probably tell from the way I mistyped "brain" as "bane" that first time. All my brain really wants to do is study maths and be sad. I don't have a huge problem with the first part of the plan, but sometimes living with the second part is tough.

Here are eight ways I've found to nudge a little coping ability towards it.

-- Dealing with catastrophising: My single favourite technique for anything ever! )
-- Some days are not good days, and you can't quite get out of bed. Other days are damned good days, and you can do anything you want. For all these days, there's Masterca-- uh, I mean improving the moment. )
-- Some problems are your problems, and some problems are not your monkey )
-- Building mastery )
-- Ideas journal )
-- Affirmations )
-- It's okay to feel the way you feel, whatever that is )
-- Half-smile )

...and this was meant to be a short one. I hope some of this helps some of you some little bit! <3<3<3
Eight days of happy, day four!


Day Four: Fanfic

I cannot quite believe this, but it was actually easier for me to find eight lots of eight pieces of fanfic -- themed, no less, not just the first sixty-four that came to mind, but the first sixty-four that came to mind and fit the tropes -- than to limit myself to just eight pieces. (Please note I wrote the previous sentence before I started coding this entry up. GAH. Tomorrow you're getting something with no HTML at all.)

I should disclaim and disclaim and disclaim that I have missed out any number of gems here; please take this only as a celebration of a tiny glimmer of the vast shiny that's out there.

-- Try Your Hand: 8 AUs and other new tricks )
-- Befores And Afters: 8 stories from elsewhere in the timeline )
-- Tree Full Of Monkeys On Nitrous Oxide: 8 queer affairs )
-- Had We But World Enough: 8 seductions )
-- And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead: 8 Pieces of Kidfic )
-- Do You Even Need To Ask If I Have Any? 8 without shame )
-- Make A Wish: 8 chances at magical realism and virgin sacrifices )
-- But Is It Art? 8 moments of meta )
Eight days of happy, day three!

Last night I made tea loaf and when my flatmate got back from a shitty, shitty day, the flat smelled of cinnamon and there was warm, fresh tea loaf for her to eat while she decompressed. So thank you! Because without you guys, I would not have written up those recipes, and I would not have made the tea loaf, and someone I care about very much would have had a worse day. <3!


Day Three: The interface of animals with technology!

-- Monkey in US makes robot in Japan walk using the power of its brain
-- Kittens on robo-vacuum cleaner
-- Camera captures a mole smelling things underwater
-- Squirrel drinking from a water fountain
-- Computer hacking with squirrels (well, okay, but I love this too much not to include it)
-- ROBOCTOPUS! (and its sidekick, CEPHALiPOD!)
-- Tweenbots! (with thanks to [livejournal.com profile] nomadicwriter) -- in which robots train people.
-- The internet! With LJ and DW and email and skype and YOU! You are totally my favourite animals; please keep interfacing with technology to your hearts' content.
Eight days of happy, day two!

Day Two: Recipes

I have a deep, dark secret: while I appreciate many things about food, I'm not very fond of actually eating it. I learned to cook in self-defense -- I like simple recipes with good, strong smells that make me hungry enough to eat what I've made. The following recipes are very, very simple; they are written under the assumption that if you already know how to cook, you already know (or, at least, can guess) how to make these.

(I should add, I owe a debt to many people for these, but most especially [livejournal.com profile] cealdis and [livejournal.com profile] fhtagn.)

-- Spinach and brie and tomato and mushroom and joy, purest joy, pancake bake )
-- Steak and ale pie )
-- Greenstuffs risotto )
-- Greenstuffs risotto part 2: The naughty bits )
-- Liver )
-- Espresso cupcakes with chocolate icing )
-- Squishy cookies )
-- Earl Grey tea loaf )
I didn't get tagged for eight days of happy, so I think I can make up any rules I like. For each of the next eight days, I'm going to pick a thing that makes me happy and post eight examples of it. These examples are not necessarily the best or my favourite -- etc, etc, disclaim, disclaim -- just the first eight I think of to share with you.

Day One: Fanvids

Oh, oh, fanvids! Pretty, pretty fanvids! In no particular order:

-- Stress by Sandy 'n Rache -- Stargate Atlantis: A deep, sensitive and nuanced character study of Rodney McKay.
-- You Can Call Me by [livejournal.com profile] sdwolfpup -- Due South: This song fits Fraser and his two Rays so, so perfectly. (See this crit by [livejournal.com profile] minnow1212 for extra joy.)
-- I'm Your Man by [livejournal.com profile] charmax -- Multifandom: For those of us who love women who love women. (It was so hard for me to pick just one of her vids.)
-- Bad Day by [livejournal.com profile] mamoru22 -- Die Hard 4.0: Because yes. Explosions and men looking at each other but not touching. (Talking of people who made it hard for me to pick just one vid.)
-- Wonderboy by Mexx -- Doctor Who: This is the Who I hold in my soul.
-- Circles by [livejournal.com profile] laurashapiro -- The West Wing: But how can you vid The West Wing, Katy? Isn't it all about the snappy, snappy dialogue? How could any song capture the way the show sounds? But how?
-- One Night Fandoms by [livejournal.com profile] thingswithwings and [livejournal.com profile] eruthros -- Yuletide: I've tried to stick to vids that are accessible to non-fannish eyes, but this is my one nod in the direction of that whole other genre of viddish happy: love-letters to fandom.
-- Kryptonite by [livejournal.com profile] jmtorres -- Andromeda: Eight is far too few for all the vids I love, but I couldn't go without mentioning the first vid I ever saw. It still just plain thrills me every time I watch it. *hugs it*

(Grah! So many others I wanted to mention... On the plus side, if I can't think of another seven things that make me happy, I can definitely manage at least one more post of eight vids, probably two.)
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