happiness – Momo's Musings

Staying at Home and Staying Productive!

Posted on March 31, 2020July 20, 2025 by Moumita Dutta

Here’s a sunset picture for happy vibes! Photo Credit: Moumita Dutta

I hope all of you reading this are healthy and well! It’s a hard time for everybody as people face different challenges, but remember to take care of yourself and keep the health of others in mind as well!

As society continues to self isolate, many people are beginning to feel the consequences first hand. Quite a few people must work from home, and schools and universities have closed for many all around the world. Don’t forget to reach out for help with close family and friends, trusted adults, or phone help lines if needed! Your health (mental and physical) must come first before everything else.

We’re all trying to find a new rhythm in our daily lives, and I especially see that it’s also hard to stay motivated. Staying cooped up at home and not being able to meet up with friends is making a lot of people feel down. So, it is important to take some time to relax and bring out some longtime hobbies, such as knitting, reading, and drawing! As of now, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer also said that it’s okay to go out for walks if you stay 2 meters away from others and you aren’t showing symptoms, so get some fresh air!

But what must we be cautious of? In this era of instant entertainment and information at the tip of our fingers, it is easy to spend days without doing anything productive. The worst part? At the end of it, most do not feel any happier. Instead, they feel agitated and anxious about their lack of productivity. So how do we stay happy and motivated during these challenging times?

Set out time for work (and also for fun!): Just as you had routines in the workplace and educational centres, you can make your very own one at home! I like to work for an hour and a half and take a fifteen minute break routinely until I finish all my tasks for the day.
And to help with that, remember to ignore distracting apps on your phone and/or other devices! Keeping it away out of sight is a good plan, as well as keeping it on silent mode. I personally use an app called Forest to remind me to stay focused whenever I pick up my phone!
Finally, remember to not get distracted by your surroundings, and try to find a quite place to work. Time will fly by, and then you’ll feel great once you get some work done. Then you can enjoy your free time! I have a post about focus right here.

We can take this challenge and get through it together! I greatly admire all of the healthcare professionals, researchers, and others who are constantly risking their lives and giving it their all to help the world recover from this predicament. And all students, stay strong! It may be confusing and stressful, but hopefully soon, everything will clear up and we can get back to classes.

Stay happy, and stay healthy! : )

Home, Positivity Posts

Happiness: Nursery Rhymes

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Moumita Dutta

Photo Credit: *Not on the High Street, the Home of Thoughtful Gifts*

Wow, what a busy start to the school year, am I right?

This isn’t one of my conventional positivity posts. Nonetheless, I think that it deserves to be in this section of my blog — some songs that had us laughing and clapping as toddlers are the same ones that we can smile back on now. However, we have some thinking to do about them as well.

First thing first. When was the last time you heard a nursery rhyme? Maybe it wasn’t too long ago, and you heard it on TV. Or you have a younger cousin, for who you dug out some child friendly songs from the back of your mind and sang to. Or maybe the last time you heard one seems like eons ago, long ago days where you yourself were still sucking your thumb and needed a lullaby every night to be put to sleep.

When I think of lullabies, I fondly remember times of the past — I used to love lullabies for bedtime. When I got a little older, I ran around playing Ring Around the Rosies and London Bridge.

But when nursery rhymes came to my mind a few days ago, I was taken away by a sharp realization… why are so many about them about passing away? It’s Raining It’s Pouring, Humpty Dumpty, Ring Around the Rosies, and London Bridge all have an underlying theme of death in they’re songs. The old man hit his head and couldn’t get up again, Humpty Dumpty’s pieces weren’t put back together again, rings around a rose shape on the body are a sign of the Black Death, and the London Bridge would’ve seen fire during the great London Fire. Unknowingly, children sing about these issues during playtime. At a young age, kids don’t know what they’re about, but as they grow up, those lyrics become a segway into difficult topics.

Now that I have that thought out of the way, there are other lullabies that actually teach us important parts of life before we even know that we’re being taught them. For example, when we were babies, it is possible that lullabies helped our memories and promoted language learning skills. Even today, some people find that singing a few facts or rhyming their notes help them memorize better. Songs also support creativity. Finally, classical music also supports memory and concentration.

Other children’s songs are also pretty poetic, if you ask me. Row, Row, Row your Boat has a line that says ‘life is but a dream’. Another one is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Really, when you think about it, some of the rhymes are as poetic as the ballads of today.

And don’t get me started on the songs of other cultures and languages. That’s a whole different post entirely!

Here’s some soft music that you can listen to to remember the power of lullabies:

This is an orchestral piece that can help you sleep and/or study.

Disney songs are always great! Listen to these tunes while trying to concentrate on work!

Finally, some classical music!

Stay tuned, and stay happy! : )

P.S. For more of my positivity posts, check out that section of my blog! These posts help me live a happier life, and I hope they can help you too!

Home, Positivity Posts, Study Corner

Happiness: Great Teachers

Posted on August 23, 2019August 23, 2019 by Moumita Dutta

When I met my kindergarten teacher for the first time, I didn’t ever want to leave the school — I still distinctly remember that fond memory.

As time passed, I met new people and became a new person. But one of the biggest factors to my development (emotionally, mentally, physically, and academically) has been my teachers. I feel like I was always super lucky — blessed, even — to have the best teachers for all my different stages of life. I was just thinking about how thankful I was to every one of them. They are a source of my happiness and improvement.

I have had many, many teachers. They were all unique in their own way. I still have connections with some of them, but with others regretfully not. I’ve lived in a few cities and had to adjust to various school environments. But I had help along the way.

One thing that I loved was that instead of just teaching us academically, all of my teachers taught my class and I proper behavior, responsibility, patience, and kindness. They were exceptional role models. My teachers loved their job very much, and through that, they infused in me a quality that I still have to this very day — my love for learning. I cannot express how important I believe it is to have a teacher invested in their job, nurturing and encouraging children to reach new heights, explore new topics, and overcome their fears.

I was able to perform two Shakespeare plays in elementary school (an unabridged version of Hamlet and and abridged version of Romeo and Juliet), thanks to two very dedicated teachers. I’m sure that it was difficult to organize us. But through that, I learned Shakespearean language, literature, and the lifestyle of the time.

In grade 8, I had a teacher that I felt was just as happy as us to go to school everyday. She constantly searched for enrichment opportunities — helping out other classes, helping the office, and letting us take the lead for fundraisers. She celebrated all of our birthdays, so we celebrated hers as well. In between our lessons, tiring (but fun) gym classes, and quiet work periods on fabulous projects, she would take pictures and videos of us. Over time, she printed out those pictures and we put them up on our classroom door. By the end of the year, it was full. And on top of that, she put together a video longer than an hour of our pictures and videos as a goodbye present.

And that was one of the years that I truly felt my love for biology — we had to work in partners and take one of each of the body systems to give a full presentation about it — anatomy, physiology, and pathology! Not to mention a full body sized diagram (it took quite a while drawing all those veins and arteries). And we also had to write a report on cells, exploring every part of them (in the end, I wrote 40 pages because I had so much fun learning about them).

Looks like I went on a tangent there. I wish I could write about all my teachers, but then you’d all be here reading about them for at least five hours! (That wasn’t even half of what I wanted to say about my grade 8 teacher.)

Anyways, I hope you all read this and wonderful memories of childhood pop into your head. Do you all have a teacher (or teachers) that hold a special place in your heart?

Stay tuned, and stay happy! : )