Happy City

In my last blog I shared some ideas for staving off the January blues and since then I've been thinking more about happiness and how we all need more of it. 
Bristol's been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently. As a young woman living not far from Clifton - and with an anxious mother texting me every evening to check I'm OK - it's hard to forget that there's a major police investigation going on just a few roads away. 
But I also keep reminding myself, and my concerned mother, that Bristol is by and large a wonderful, safe place to live and we shouldn't let horrible, tragic, but hopefully one-off crimes detract from that. 
As I've said before there are many things that make Bristol so fantastic, and one I've been wanting to write about for a while is an initiative I stumbled across on Facebook called Happy City Bristol. 
Its mission is very simple - to spread happiness in Bristol. And it aims to do this by bringing people together, connecting communities and helping people to make the changes they want to see in their city. 
I love everything about this. I don't think there's anything more important than happiness. And by that I don't mean the hit of instant gratification you get from a new pair of shoes. I mean that deep-seated sense of wellness and oneness that makes the whole world a better place.
And I fully endorse the Happy City principle that this comes from "creating caring, connected communities" and "bringing people, ideas and resources together".
The sense that Bristol is pulsing with a creative, community spirit was what drew me here, and it makes me very happy to find that there's a project focused on tapping into that and helping it to flourish.