Congratulations ffran – well done in making something happen that you wanted. Its lovely to have someone share something good.
I like your Dad’s saying – we see more of what we look for. Its why when you are single and lonely everyone seems to be a couple lol.
When I was in a particular low mood and walking to a friends house I realized I was hating everyone going by – seeing all the (what I considered) negative things them, smoking/stupidly dressed/too loud, so I force myself to silently compliment one good thing I could see about everyone going past (nice shoes, helping the environment by biking etc) and suddenly people were not so bad and I was feeling like people were generally nice or at least o.k. I guess it particularly works with people as we are a mix of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ qualities or things people can perceive that way 🙂