August was a big improvement over July!

And that’s a good thing, because July included quite a bit of unhappiness. August was great in comparison, and I contained a lot of happy moments.

I want to share some of these moments with you here. Let’s get right into it.

Here are my personal happiness ratings, neatly presented in a simple line chart:

My average happiness rating of August 2020 was 7.90.

That’s quite a lot higher than the 7.33 I averaged in July.

In July, I had six days that I rated with a 6 or lower on my happiness rating scale.

I’m happy to I had none of these days in August.

Positive happiness factors

Here are the positive factors that influenced my happiness in July:

As usual, my relationship is topping the charts.

But what’s more interesting in this chart is how much “Relaxing” I did in August.

If you’ve been reading these updates for a while now, you’ll know how August was my first month without a job in almost 6 years!

I started my career in 2014, and resigned at the end of last month.

The reason of my resignation? The TLDR is that my girlfriend and have carefully saved and budgeted for a sabbatical. We’re going to step out of the rat race for a while, so that we can travel for a long period.

This is way outside of our comfort zone, but we’re extremely excited about it!

Since we didn’t have a job anymore, we had quite a bit of time that we used to just catch a break. That’s where all this “Relaxing” comes from!

Sure, we still had to leave our apartment, clean everything and store all our belongings, but we found enough time in-between that we used to relax!

The Netherlands got hit with a big heat wave in the middle of July, which made it a little more challenging to relax. But since my girlfriend and I were jobless (it’s still a bit weird to realize!), we didn’t find it too hard to find relaxation!

With this abundance of free time, we made sure we spent lots of time catching up with our families and friends. This had a big positive influence on my happiness in August!

Negative happiness factors

There were a couple of things that impacted my happiness negatively:

Looking back at these Negative Happiness Factors, I can’t help but feel that August was a really “simple” month. My life was really basic.

All I had to worry about throughout the month was moving out of our apartment. It was a lot of work, but since we were able to relax sufficiently as well, it didn’t bother me all that much.

It turns out that this big heat wave in the Netherlands impacted my happiness the most.

It was just too damn hot outside!

As a result, our apartment got really hot inside. It was a challenge to keep the heat out! This impacted my sleep as well, which resulted in a bit of tiredness.

Nothing that I couldn’t handle though. 🙂

Where does that leave me and my girlfriend now?

• We’re both without a job right now!
• We’re carefully monitoring our expenses, so that our careful budgeting will protect our trip during these crazy pandemic times.
• We’ve left our apartment and are ready to start traveling in Europe! First destination: Sweden!

More on that next month!

How was your August? What would you rate your happiness on a scale from 1 to 10 this past month? Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Much Better (More Relaxing) Month – August 2020 appeared first on Tracking Happiness.