. Total and utter bull. It sucks to be up at four am. I have to go to work tomorrow, and not only that-- I have to be awake for work tomorrow. But, I realized something by the time I was out of bed at 4:06 am. I'm up, whether I want to be or not, and I can either deal and write the blog post I've been meaning to write all night, or I can pout and toss and turn and be angry at myself and continue to get no sleep while being extremely frustrated and unhappy. I choose the former.So here I am, in my office, with the lights dimmed and a nice warm glass of milk. I get the sense I'm going to get a lot of writing done. Good. I need to.
After writing on Friday that I needed more in my life than just work, I spent the weekend thinking a great deal about happiness (and work). I've been inspired by Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project (as you can probably tell--I keep linking to it. If you buy it by clicking through me, I'll get part of the proceeds!). The project is deceptively simple: Gretchen, a New York writer, dedicated a year to making herself happier. It sounds selfish, but she did her research (which included philosophers and novelists as well as positive psychologists) and found that happiness not only affects the self, but also all of the people around you. By making herself happier, she was working to make her family happier, and in general, the world a better place. It was sort of a personal experiment. I'm in the process of finishing the book now and I think it's brilliant.
I was gushing about it to my boyfriend Adam earlier this weekend, he's a psychology major and read it for his positive psychology class. His take was more skeptical: "None of us [in his positive psych class] can afford to spend a year dropping out and focusing entirely on ourselves." He said his professor agreed that while the book was great, the concept was flawed-- Gretchen lived an exceptional life. She's financially supported by her husband; she's "all grown up," and she's a writer, so she had the free time to experiment with a project like "happiness." I instantly felt a stab of pity for her, even though we never met. Adam's criticism, though completely valid, touched on every insecurity she seemed to express throughout her book. Then, I felt a stab of defensiveness.
At first, I didn't want to admit that Gretchen had an exceptional life, but it's true. Her life is different from mine. I'm 21, still a student, still trying to figure out how to pay the heating bills in the winter. I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do when I get out of college, which might even be next December. My internship this summer is all-consuming-- I can't devote hours to reading on happiness and I don't have time to write a novel in a month or write gratitude letters every night. I barely have enough time to write this blog. Still, I hated the idea that Adam could be right.
Then, I woke up at three in the morning. I realized that whether or not we "have time" we're going to be constantly forced to make happiness decisions every single day. This morning I got out of bed grumbling that Gretchen Rubin didn't have to go to work at eight am; she could sleep later in the day if she wanted to, so it's all very well to say "I'm grateful to be up at four am"-- things are different when you have to go to work. Then it hit me that I was up at four whether I was going to work or not, so I could choose to be "grateful" and make something of it, or I could storm about and hit the bed (as I have so many other mornings) and be completely unproductive. I'm glad I decided to be grateful.
Adam and his psychology professor are right: not all of us have a year to devote to being happier. I have three months before I go back to college. Not all of us have unlimited time to read and think about happiness-- we already have jobs. I work for two very demanding screenwriters whose demands are slowly taking over my life. The trick is to work happiness into all of that. I started this blog with only a vague idea that I wanted to write about working in the film business and my goal to be happier, but now, a week later, we have a more substantial project: Create my own happiness project (I call it the California Project, because that's how long it will last). Somehow, I'm going to find a way to be happy, while embracing all of the constraints that already inhibit my life.
Haha. The sheer ambition of it makes me nervous.
No comments:
Post a Comment