"But when you're happy, don't."

I realized a number of very interesting things about myself in the last few weeks. But, all in all, the most important one is that I have been doing a lot of this HTR stuff to clear out some mental junk that I've collected over the last several years. I realized that I've been thinking about all of that a lot less lately. Apparently I've reached a place where my mental version of Clean Sweep has freed me up enough to do what I want and/or need to be doing now. So, while I will be starting to talk about what I am doing, I thought I should explain why I'm moving from the introspective HTR-Phase 2 work to a lot of doing/being out in the world activities. I am fortunate enough to have found just the thing to do that.

Most of you know about HTH and Feynman. I'm sure that you all remember hearing how I knew that HTH had really read all of that crazy physics stuff because he mispronounced his name, right? So, I always keep an eye out for Feynman related books to add to our collection. The most recent addition is called Feynman's Rainbow. HTH handed it to me earlier this week with instructions to read a short section that made him think of me. And, not surprisingly, there was a quote in there that I needed. So, without further ado, here is a little wisdom from Richard Feynman, via Leonard Mlodinow. [Bibliography note: This quote picks up a paragraph that starts the bottom of page 158.]

"I'm not going to psychoanalyze myself. Sometimes it is good to know yourself, but sometimes it isn't. When you laugh at a joke, if you think about why you laughed, you might realize that, after all, it wasn't funny, it was silly, so you stop laughing. My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you're happy, don't. Why spoil it? You're probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you'd just spoil it to know it."

Now I'll confess that I'm not happy with the job this week, but I'm really happy with everything else! So, I'm not thinking about it. I'm just doing. And I'm having a ball! I'll tell ya'll all about it as time permits.