People Who Mistake Impulse for Love (Song Translation)

Sometimes, your life just sucks. And you don't want to analyze it. You don't want to talk about it. You just want to curl up in your bed and just be. This drama did that for me. It's called I'm So Smart (我叫郝聪明 - the English translation is a play on words of the original Chinese title, which I will explain in another post). I loved loved this drama, but because it's a web-drama, it didn't get much publicity in either mainland China nor the international online community. As such, I'm going to do a review of it, and maybe even a recap if I feel ambitious enough. But, small steps right? First, a teaser of sorts - the ending theme song replete with a music video including scenes from the drama and a translation of the song. It's really sweet in both the melody and the lyrics - it's actually been receiving a lot of plays on my phone ever since I watched this drama almost a year ago in early 2014 (!!!).

New "favorites" series: What's Making Me Happy #1 (myspiffyrosegirl)

Okay, my belly is full now, meaning I can happily finish this post. This will hopefully be the first of a series called "What's Making Me Happy," which was inspired by a segment of the same name on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. It's basically a space for us to talk about favorites and recommendations. So, I'll just go right into some recent and some longstanding things that's been making me happy--

READS

What can be more perfect than to start off a "What's Making Me Happy" series with this book called Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD? It's essentially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in book-form for depression and anxiety. To put it simply, this book has been revolutionary for me. It's made me realize how much my depression/anxiety has affected me and how pervasive they are in my everyday life. But more importantly, the book and CBT itself depart from the Freudian philosophy and all the psychotherapy that was founded on it. What does that mean? In a nutshell, it means 3 basic things - (1) depression is not a mirror to human nature's true form, so it's not something that people have to suffer with, (2) a lot of your feelings including your strongest ones are based your thoughts - hence cognitive based therapy, and (3) so the way to fight your way out of your depression/anxiety is to first change your thoughts in order to change how you feel. Simple, but amazing.