Welcome to the Serendipity SIG.
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This Special Interest Group has been created to let you tell the
world about the good things going on in your life.  Did an old
friend phone you out of the blue?  Tell us about it.  Did you
clean up the papers on your desk that had been piling up for far
too long?  Pat yourself on the back here.  Did you get a new job?
Let us rejoice with you.

It's strange, but true, that when people acknowledge the good
things in their lives, they tend to attract more good things.
There are two phases to this magical tendency:  Blow off steam
about whatever irks you (the Peeve SIG is good for that), and
then thank the Universe for all the blessings it sends you -- and
here's where the Serendipity SIG comes in.

Somehow or other, that dual act works wonders.  The more optimistic
you are, the more you have to be optimistic about.


A little history.
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Long, long ago on a Freenet not so far away, there was a Peeve SIG.
The Peeve SIG was used by lots and lots of people to vent their
frustrations.  Whenever anything annoying happened, people could
write about it, blow off steam, and maybe get a little helpful
advice or sympathy.

That SIG worked so well that a suggestion was made that there be
an anti-peeve SIG too.  I (Mia Shinbrot) came up with the name
"Serendipity SIG" and volunteered to facilitate it, but being a
natural-born procrastinator, I did nothing about it until
TheDelser, aka Adele Warner, jump-started me by producing her
own first draft of the Serendipity SIG.  That first draft has
since been greatly modified, but I am still grateful to her for
giving me the impetus to get off my tail and get going.  Credit
is also due to Stephanie Spyksma, who made the original suggestion
for an anti-peeve SIG, and who has since become a facilitator of
our very own Serendipity SIG.


Meaning of the word.
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The word "serendipity" is defined in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate
Dictionary as follows:

"serendipity [from its possession by the heroes of the Persian
        fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip] (1754) :
        the faculty of finding valuable or agreeable things
        not sought for."

Or, from the Random House Webster's Dictionary,

        "an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident."


And now we can encourage serendipity in our own lives by reading
and posting in the Victoria Freenet's Serendipity SIG.