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Blogging in general

I love blogging. I've had blogs under multiple personas (some mine and some anonymous) at multiple servers including Blogspot, Xanga, Diaryland, Livejournal, and Myspace. I haven't been part of a group blog since I was fifteen and part of an ongoing story blog where the writers (myself included) just wrote their pieces to infuriate the other people invovled. Hey, I said I was fifteen. Anyway, for my first post I wanted to say how excited, although hesitant, I am to be part of an online blog again.

Fictitious Felicity

Why is it so hard to be happy? You strive to find happiness; you plan your entire life in pursuit of goals that you believe will make you happy—getting a college degree, traveling the world, making more money, helping others, creating a masterpiece, etc….
But why is it that even after achieving those goals you soon find yourself despondent again?

The answer may be that your state of happiness is completely predetermined by something beyond your control. No, not God or karma, but psychology. Researchers are finding evidence that everyone exists at a baseline of happiness encoded by experience, personality, and genetics. Another determinate of happiness is the evolutionary process that requires adaptation to environmental changes so that people may overcome any situation and return to a habitual state of being. Therefore, regardless of what happens—winning $16 million in the lottery or becoming paralyzed in a freak accident—biological and psychological factors will cause the return of that habitual state, the baseline of happiness.

At this moment, your baseline of happiness might be affecting your reaction to this information.
Do these findings depress you because you realize that your current state of happiness is the happiest you’ll ever be? Or do these findings liberate you because you realize that if your level of happiness is predetermined then it doesn’t matter what you do in life, you’ll still be as happy or as unhappy as you are now?