Wednesday 17 June 2015

my fifteen favourite: feelings

one of the craziest things i find about being a person is how much you tend to FEEL things. that might sound dumb to you, and just reading back that sentence it sounds a little dumb to me, but our propensity for having strong opinions, reactions to and emotions about the things that go on around us is a pretty crazy notion when you really start to think about it. don't get me wrong: this is not a 100% awesome thing. oftentimes we let our emotions cloud our judgment, or stubbornly refuse to let anyone who doesn't hold the same opinions as us have the time of day. feelings also sometimes make you feel (ha, no kidding), well, kinda crappy. on the flip side, though, feelings can be just amazing. The tremendous Hank Green (one half of vlogbrothers awesomeness) tackled this idea last month in one of his vlogs. His video description summed up his thought process so brilliantly that i thought i'd share it here:

When we're confronted with negative experiences, we want to analyze them and think about them and remember them for future use. But with positive emotions, we often just feel them and enjoy them, which is wonderful, but also leads to us putting less weight on them and it seems like they take up less space in our minds. No one feels comfortable shouting at the world about how great their day was, or what a cool person they met. Recognizing and harping on the positive experiences we have is a great way, I think, to both have a better outlook on life, and have more positive experiences. So that's what I did in [this] video.


he's awesome, huh? some other cool vloggers have since picked up the baton and listed their 15 favourite feelings, and i caught wind of the idea through my brilliant friend Bronwyn's blog post the other day. since reading her post, i've been compiling my personal list in multiple places (first my brain, and then scribbling on a notepad so i wouldn't forget things) and now i've finally gotten around to typing it up here. so grab the popcorn, strap yourselves down, prepare yourselves in whatever way necessary for the discovery of HANNAH'S FIFTEEN FAVOURITE FEELINGS. (i have accompanied them with my favourite illustrations from LastLemon's 'Happiness Is' series, which is the best thing in the entire world. check some of their illustrations out here.)

1. hot-mug-in-my-hands feeling

yay, i get to experience this feeling right now! it's around 8 degrees Celsius today and my supervisor/boss just made me a mug of coffee. i love wrapping my cold hands around a nice warm mug of something and feeling them heat up. i drink hot beverages pretty quickly (case in point: my mug of coffee is already finished) but even after i've consumed all the coffee/tea/hot chocolate, i'll try to soak up as much of the residual heat still left on the mug as possible.


2. oh-goodness-the-airplane-is-flying feeling

there are two components to this feeling. the first is the literal feeling you get as you're sitting in an airplane and it's rolling down the runway and suddenly it lifts off the ground. that first second of airborne-ness, the feeling that your stomach is a couple metres below you, the crazy almost-weightlessness - i love that so much. the second component of this feeling is the excitement that usually accompanies the literal take-off because you're going somewhere. it's so very lovely.

3. woah-you-get-me feeling

sometimes it's hard for me to communicate my feelings (hahaha clearly not in this post) or make someone see something from my perspective, and that can be super frustrating. i often prepare myself to be misunderstood and have to explain my position further. other times, though, i'm having a conversation with a person and one of us will say something and the other will say YES YES YES and it's like fireworks in my brain exploding the words "I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS THIS WAY WHAAAAT" into the night sky of my universe. (shoooo that metaphor.) this also happens to me with literature and poetry all the time, which is mainly why i love it so much. there's little better than reading a book and reaching a paragraph that resonates so deeply with you that you feel like jumping up and down and punching the air triumphantly. even Ms Dickinson got it....


I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog! 

- Emily Dickinson


4. workout-and-a-hot-shower, let-me-now-take-on-the-world feeling

i am not a morning person, and yet almost every day i drag myself out of bed at 5:45 to go torture myself physically for an hour. (i also am prone to hyperbole; i wonder if you've noticed?) i originally started doing this because it was the only real time during the day that i could commit to getting my exercise in, but now that it's a part of my routine i find that it's just about the best way to get my sleepy body out of bed and started with my day. i absolutely love giving the workout my all, taking a freakin' blazing-hot shower and thinking, "if i could get through that workout i can sure as heck tackle anything today has to throw at me".

5. pillows feeling

...buuut also i love sleep. and i love comfy sleep. and comfy sleep for me means all of the world's pillows on my bed, around me and under my head and back and and and... yeah, i'm kind of pillow-obsessed. my ideal pillow situation is now at least two poofy pillows under my head and at least one poofy pillow between my mattress and my upper body, and when i achieve this equation it's the greatest feeling to just lie there and feel comfy and cocooned.

6. reunion feelings








i'm in a situation now where so many of the people i love are all around the country and the world. while this sucks while i can't be with them, it means there are constantly opportunities for reunions with my friends and family whenever i go somewhere. i absolutely adore seeing people i love after a long time apart and just being able to catch up and feel like no time at all has passed.

7. my-cats-love-me feelings

of course, living away from home means being away from my furries, too. every time i get back to my small town and we pull up outside our house, i love seeing Roo trot up to the gate expectantly; i love jumping out of the car and having Gimli come up to me for scratches. the best is when i'm watching something with Mom and Gimli or Roo decides my lap is The Chosen One for the evening, or in the middle of the night when Roo jumps up onto my bed and meows to be let under the covers and snuggle with me. like Hank says in the video above, it's awesome when the cat chooses you. it makes you feel special ;)

8. hair feelings

okay, i have a lot of feelings about hair. hair is the best thing. i have narrowed it down to four main feelings that i go crazy over (ja, really, there are more - i'm not joking about this love of hair business). first, and tops, is the feeling of the wind in short short hair. if you've ever shaved your head, you'll probably know what i'm talking about. since i've always had long hair, when i shaved my hair off a few years ago i wasn't prepared for the amazing feeling of your scalp tingling when the wind blows, even ever-so-gently. it's giving me goosebumps just writing about it. since i can't get that feeling these days, i resort to the other three favourite hair feelings: the someone-playing-with-or-plaiting-my-hair feeling, the fuzzy-ends-after-a-haircut feeling and the oh-yeah-my-hair-is-clean-and-smells-fantastic feeling. hair is the best.

9. breakthrough-moment feeling

there comes a time when you have been puzzling over something for a long while and trying and trying to get something right or think of a solution or a creative approach to a problem, and suddenly it hits you, like you've been struck by a (very lovely, not dangerous to your health) bolt of lightning. the AHA! moment. i live for that feeling.

10. exhausted, i-worked-hard feeling



okay, this is the one feeling that i couldn't really find an accurate accompaniment for, but these two combined kinda make it work ;) when you've been working on something for a forever-long time and you've poured your heart and soul and energy and life into it, seeing it come to life and feeling that good type of exhaustion, where you know you've earned success and done a great job, that is a joyous feeling to experience.

11. this-music/book-is-brand-new-and-awesome-and-giving-me-goosebumps feeling


aaaaah. finally getting to settle down with a book that you've been anticipating for months, or with some newly-released music that you've just been burning to get your ears on, and not being disappointed - that, my friends, is the life :D

12. my-food-approaches feeling

the image describes this perfectly, but i still want to talk about it because FOOD. so i will just say... FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD HAPPY BELLY FOOD FOOD YUMMY FOOD GOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD.

13. trying-on-clothes-and-NAILING-IT feeling

sometimes you go clothes-shopping and nothing is fitting and you feel really stupid in everything you try on and it can be pretty frustrating... and sometimes you pick something off of the rack, walk into the  change room, put it on and feel elated because OBVIOUSLY this piece of material that has been crafted into a garment was made specifically and only for you, and it fits you like a glove, and you feel magical, as though you are from Harry Potter. it is a goooood good feeling, seriously.

14. boyfriend feelings

like hair, i struggled to narrow these feelings down to a single one, so i have grouped them together into the feelings i have thanks to my guy, Chris. (i love him more than my hair, though.) the first one is that "oh-hi-you" feeling, when i look over at him and i get crazy shivers and remember the first time i remember seeing him and loving the fact that i love him and he loves me so much. (eeeeuw.) the second is the cuddle/tickle feeling, when i fit perfectly in his arms and then he decides it is right and good to tickle me because he knows i will lose my head completely. connected to that is the next-level-safety feeling. what i mean by that is that i am able to be totally vulnerable around him and i have found such a safe place with him, and it is such a wondrous feeling. i also get proud feelings on the regular, because Chris is smart and strong, connected and reliable and funny, and an all-round winner at life. (for instance *brag brag* he was just very recently awarded a scholarship of a sizeable amount to go to a philosophy conference in the USA... i know.)

15. soft kisses

alright, this is also technically a 'boyfriend feeling' but i separated it from its kind because it is hands-down the best feeling ever and deserved its own place of honour. tender, vulnerable kisses with Chris say so much and they give me goosies and make me the absolute happiest person on earth, and so they get the final and top feeling on my list.

OK I'M DONE BEING GROSS NOW... those were all of my favourite feelings ever :)

ALSOTHESEOKBYE:


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