About Me

I am finding that I like the name Willing Wheeling even though I wanted to use “Raindrops on Roses” from The Sound of Music’s My Favorite Things for the name of this blog. Appears someone already had my original idea, so I can’t use that.

So, what’s Willing Wheeling all about? I am a guy who likes, make that loves, riding a bicycle. As you can see from the photo above, I often ride with my dog, Gabi. I live in Chicago and pedaled over 8000 miles in 2012. So I ride year ’round. I wish I could articulate why I love bike riding so much. The best I have come up with after years of thinking about it is that I experience a feeling of flight while doing it that is just short of intoxicating to me. Not soaring up, but low level flight. I think trying to explain my love for biking is like trying to explain why you love the person you are with. You can name a lot of nice positive traits like, honest, sincere, caring, etc., but those are probably true of all your friends. Those aren’t the reason he/she makes the hair on your arms stand up. That’s why you love him/her.

Happiness is not some kind of airy-fairy thing. I subscribe to the dictums of positive psychology created by Martin Seligman. Positive psychology, or flourishing, is symbolized by the acronym PERMA. P = Positive Emotions; E = Engagement; R = Relationships; M = Meaning and A = Accomplishment. You can read a good explanation of PERMA and the rest of it here. I wrote it up for the other blog I write One Regular Guy Writing About Food, Exercise and Living Longer.

Three of the pillars of positive psychology are Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, Positivity by Barbara Frederickson and Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Czikscentmihaly. I have read each of them and recommend them highly. The links I have supplied take you directly to their listings on Amazon.

Lots of cyclists like to ride to places. I don’t. I just love the act of riding.

But, bicycling is not all I plan to write about. That’s where the favorite things theme comes in. I am going to write about the stuff that makes me feel good – be happy. Maybe it will make you feel the same way. From time to time I may write about things that I don’t care for, but those will be in the minority. I also like to take pictures with my iPhone. I live in a beautiful place and am happy to share it through the photos.

There will be blog items on books, music and movies for sure as they give me a great deal of happiness.

Enjoy!

Tony