100 Happy(ish) Days

In my last "proper" post, I wrote about signing up to the 100happydays challenge. This was an online challenge where you were supposed to take a photo every day, for 100 days, of something that made you smile, and post it on Facebook.

Not long ago, I completed that challenge - and boy am I glad I signed up to it. I think it's actually kept me sane.

I haven't been able to skate much, you see. And usually, skating is what keeps me sane.

I had expected this year to be better than 2013 but unfortunately it didn't start out very well
. To keep it brief and not go OTT on the sharing, by February, I'd been involved in two car accidents (one of them quite nasty), been diagnosed with skin cancer and learned my thyroid has become underactive. Not the start I was looking for really!

But despite all that - and I'm quite proud of this - I DID manage to find 100 things to be happy about. The challenge has taught me a lot about being grateful for the little things in life, or the things you take for granted ordinarily. The challenge really made me take notice of all the things and people in my life that I love.

For example - on the worst days:

Car accident number one - where I ended up in A and E, with a written off car and months of physio and pain - I posted this picture and caption:

Day10: Ok, so today's been anything but happy, but this picture represents all the kind people of Stockton who rushed to my aid after a car accident, and lovely stranger Ann, who brought me a sweet cup of tea from her nearby home for the shock.

Then there was this:

Day14: Thought I would really struggle for anything at all today, what with still suffering from the car accident, my car being written off, a cancer diagnosis and a broken Kindle, all in a few days, then I got home to a letter from one of my most fabulous friends and my lovely hubby bought me a new Kindle. 

I promised myself when I signed up for the challenge that I wouldn't just post skating pictures every day (though I knew it would be tempting!). As it happened, I wasn't able to skate much for the three or so months of the challenge anyway, due to pain and surgery mainly. But you had to know it would get in there somewhere. I managed to mention skating TWENTY times in one form or another.

Skate-related pictures that made it into my 100happydays included my legs covered in 'snow' from sliding on the ice, a text from CoachA arranging a lesson, an inspirational friend I know who turns 70 soon and is still skating beautifully, me back on the ice after lots of time off, a picture of my friend's (extremely nervous) nine-year-old who had made some great progress in her skating that day, me stretching in my first off-ice class for months, and my new blades when they arrived.

My favourite skatey picture had to be this one, which makes my 3 jump look waaaay more impressive than it actually is! Haha!

And my favourite skatey moment, which I couldn't get a picture of, as such, was the day I was well enough to skate, and ended up spending about 20 minutes whizzing around with some youngsters in wheelchairs from a local school. Their excited faces made my week. My legs complained the next day, mind!

As for non skating-related happydays - some of the silly little things that made me smile were some of my favourites:

Day37: This will mean nothing to anyone else, but I've chuckled all evening about an incident in Asda where an old lady tried to run me off the aisle. I honestly suspected the Reaper had finally caught me (after all, he's tried!) and I was a ghost walking, the way she acted like I didn't exist and tried to walk through me for a good three minutes! Haha! (Note - file picture. I didn't actually ask her to pose...!)

Day44: So I wrote some instruction sheets for when we go away and my sister stays in the house, but pretty sure my hubby was responsible for this one.

 Day49: My sister's pure drama always makes me smile. Also: "Kyle can die if he wants" made me laugh.

Day51: Not sure which made me smile more today. Treated myself to new boots. But also, I went into Forbidden Planet (geeky comic store, basically) and nearly gave a geek a heart attack. He was standing reading a comic, and was VERY nervous that a girl was nearby, kept shooting me wary glances out the corner of his eye. Then he slinked away and it became apparent that he'd been reading a comic called, purely, "Sex". Hahahahaha! Busted!

And finally:

 Day99: Hahahaha! Stay classy, Teesside.

I've been tempted to re-start the challenge to be honest as I feel like I've gained so much from it. That said, just the fact that it's in my head has changed the way I'm thinking. I find myself smiling at something during the day and thinking "If I was still doing 100happydays, this would be today's"...So that's got to be a positive.