While I am sure the rather knowing young lady in the picture above would beg to differ, I have long believed that a little bit of naughtiness goes a long way to guaranteeing happiness. But it seems the Richter scale of happiness cannot be judged on our ability to behave ourselves, but rather on how much TV we watch, because according to a study by the University of Maryland, truly happy people are just too busy to be watching re-runs of seventies sit-coms...
According to The New York Times...
"Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and
reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching
television, a new study finds.That’s what unhappy people do."
Happy people you see are doing something altogether more fulfilling instead. They are reading and socialising and worshiping and walking, but what they aren't doing is sitting slumped in front of the television truthfully feeling indifferent to the show's they convince themselves they enjoy because television according to the study's author, provides "momentary pleasure and long-term misery and regret".
(Heavens. I'm a sucker for momentary pleasure.)
But this is something I have been thinking about a lot recently, if only because as the night's draw in and I find myself sitting in an albeit cosy living room, more often than not in front of the box, laptop perched on my knee, I do start to feel my mood slipping a little bit, to feel the fringe of seasonal depression lapping the corners of my mind, and in retrospect it could, I suppose be to do with, in my world at least, the correlation between Winter nights and increased TV viewing, necessitated by the urge to sit on top of the radiator, close the curtains on the rest of the world and vegitate in an exhausted fashion after a day of reading for a living and making mindless conversation, mostly with myself...
But no more! I want to be happy! Who need's long term misery and regret? (That's what men are for!) And look! Too much of this misery stuff has got me embracing the exclamation mark in a rather teenage fashion!!! And so what I need is a plan. I looove a good plan.
Thus Winter Survival BrocanteHome style will involve trips to the library for books about all manner of subjects unrelated to my great love Vintage Housekeeping. I will expand my horizons and dabble in books about erm.. geography. Or hedgehogs. Once again my evening bath will involve aromathery concoctions and more candles than you can shake a great big match at, instead of the token dip I've been currently enduring and one measly tealight. (There's acredit crunch on don't you know?). Perhaps I will say yes to random invitations. Give up licking my wound's and start dating again! (Be afraid... be very afraid...). Drink white tea instead of black. Turn the day upside down and bake fairycakes by candlelight. Go to bed at seven thirty and watch only films I have carefully chosen from my DVD club. No more of this spoon fed soap nonsense. I say no more!
I will not be S.A.D, I will be happy! I will not be good, I will be NAUGHTY!
And if the worst comes to the worst there is always YVette Fielding shrieking her head off on Most Haunted.
