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 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 Past 100.

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 need that. 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

PS In 2017, I decided that there was so much ignorance and negative emotion around following the 2016 Presidential Election that I needed to put out some positive items on it. Hence, what you are reading today.