Happiness -- What does it Mean to You?

It's time for WGT to come out of hibernation! A couple of brain waves kept me awake last night and I'm all excited about two new projects. Here's the first:

I want to explore what makes you guys happy, dear readers from different countries. All you talented scribes from all over the world, give us your views on HAPPINESS! (apart from book sales...:) But I can't do it without you!

How do you define HAPPINESS? Can you decide to be HAPPY?

You surely heard of the World Happiness Report conducted annually by CNN? According to that statistic, in 2017, the happiest countries were:
Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Iceland. 

Do you think your country comes into the equation? Let's hear YOU speak, not statistics.

Fellow-writers, bloggers, philosophers, psychologists...and fellow human beings who are going through this school of life, tell us about your impressions and beliefs on happiness. Tell us what makes you happy.

Why does this topic mesmerize me?  When we first moved to Ireland, Irish people asked us whether we were happy in our new home, the old farmhouse. For a German of my generation, it was absolutely unheard of to ask strangers whether they were happy. It felt intrusive, inconsiderate, prying to say the least. And for me, this question came at a time when I had just been "emigrated" to a country against my will and I found it hard to adjust.

Ever since then, I've been checking back in with my happiness barometer where I am on the scale of 1-10.

Is happiness too personal a matter/question for you too or will people know when you are you bubbling over with joy and happiness?

Let us know!  

We're alive...let's get kicking!

Created on Thanksgiving 3 years ago, this blog has been in hibernation for the past year.  My writer friend Anu Lal encouraged me to resume posting. He will join me as an editor and contribute to this site.
We need  Y O U, writers, authors, aspiring authors, bloggers, poets and readers to let this site thrive again. Even if you only dabble in writing, give it a shot. We take submissions about almost every topic under the sun with the exception of porn and religion.

And in the spirit of true Thanksgiving, this is my first post:
"My way of giving thanks this year: Free copies of my short story "There is No Going Back" from: Nov 25th (my birthday till Black Friday!) http://amzn.to/1Fl9Ezc. Thanks for a life I am allowed to live in freedom and without wars in contrast to my ancestors' generations and many millions of people around the world who spend these days as refugees. Happy Thanksgiving!"

Like many of you, I feel privileged to be able and allowed to express my thoughts without prosecution, to let me hopes and dreams run wild and free, to enjoy the right of freedom of expression, to exchange views with like-minded individuals around the globe. Yes, this has been a truly International site and it would be wonderful if we could keep that going. I'll provide the statistics on that shortly.

Send us your submissions: about 500-800 words; include a pic of you or your book; include a link to your books and blogs. Help us make this blog multi-facetted, multi-cultural, exciting, inspiring, informative- fun! And leave comments!

Happy Thanksgiving!

WHY JOIN GOOGLE +

Google Plus, G+,Google Plus One, Google +, however you want to call it, began as an invitation only social media site and is now open to all. Yes, this means anyone and everyone with a valid email and internet connection can join the site that's grown faster than Facebook and Twitter combined in their first 3 months of business with 20 million sign-ups in just the first month alone (existing social media infrastructure helped of course).

From the Google Plus team; Yes, finally the Google+ Invitations are now out and you can request your invitation immediately. Create Your Free Account.

You might be thinking, Really? Do I need to add yet another social  media thing to my whole routine? The answer is yes, or you really should consider it because if you're serious about building an internet
presence, it's quite possible Google Plus will end up being the one that gives you the most internet visibility over time. The reason is because they're owned by the king of everything online: Google. And even though
Facebook is the current king for social media, Google does so much morethan just social media including being the world's largest search engine by a truly gross margin.

From just a few weeks of regular use on Google Plus, my experience is that this service is my overall favorite social media venue, better than Facebook and Twitter for networking with readers, writers and publishing
people in general (or whatever your field is). Like LinkedIn, it feels more professional while Facebook feels more suited for friends and family. Unlike LinkedIn, Google Plus is much more dynamic, streaming with real time updates-chats-video hangouts and more. Another nice feature is creating individual circles for family, friends, colleagues, the softball gang, whatever you want and streaming (or viewing) those announcements from just the people in that group. Facebook has recently upgraded their own service to copy many of G+'s innovations, but now it means going through lists of hundreds of FB friends and separating them into categories, which is something I don't feel like doing at this point.

I wrote a previous blog post with a bit more detail here but mostly I wanted to remind people who might be feeling reluctant about getting involved with yet another social media site to just do it. This one is really important if you want to continue building an online presence over time.

Other things that are smart to do after joining G+ are to fill out your profile with a good deal of information and some photos of you. Add all of your websites and blog links that point to you
and your books. Also, for bloggers, learn to add the ?rel=author suffix tag just after your G+ user ID and place that on every website or blog that you have listed on your G+ profile page. This way Google will
recognize your profile really belongs to the webmaster of that site. In time it could help you get "verified" as a celebrity or branded person in the eyes of the site, which will help immensely with your following. There's no guarantee they will "verify" you, but it's an easy thing to do in hopes they will.

For any writers, readers and publishing people who might be interesting in connecting with me, please do and I'll add you to my circles. Just click on my photo or this link here – https://profiles.google.com/117850331447734054313?rel=author

(Notice how I used the ?rel=author tag for my G+ link; that's how it should look following your own user ID.) And if you think this is a nifty badge, you can make one easily for your own sites at http://turhan.me/+me/.

You can contact Jason at : jason@thelittleuniverse.com