{"id":753,"date":"2013-07-08T14:48:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T19:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=753"},"modified":"2013-07-30T00:29:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T05:29:01","slug":"chasing-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=753","title":{"rendered":"Chasing Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.&#8221; &#8212; Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and essayist. <em>The American Notebooks<\/em> (1851) [Quoted in <em>Time<\/em>, July 8, 2013 cover story, &#8220;The Pursuit of Happiness.&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>In my case, I decided to chase after music (learning to play the blues) and found&#8230;endless challenges, frustration, anxiety, disappointment&#8230;but more importantly the satisfaction, joy and exhilaration of <em>making<\/em> music. I also discovered a passion for music that I expect to last the rest of my life.<\/p>\n<p>Whether your &#8220;object of pursuit&#8221; is music, art, literature, public service, cooking or knitting, I hope you find something you love that leads to similar challenges and joys.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.&#8221; &#8212; Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and essayist. The American [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}