The Happiness Stigma

My father read this blog yesterday. His comment: "Sad. Why are you so unhappy at the world?" I can quote that because I immediately wrote it down. I didn't know how to respond. Sure, it was a rough day when the window-replacement-guys came, but other than that I was certain I hadn't spent my blog complaining about being unhappy. Instead, I had been practicing the Art of Happiness.

That's when I realized it--there's a stigma against happiness projects. We're all expected to be happy people, and so there's something terribly wrong with admitting that we're not 100% satisfied with our lives, with admitting that we want to change. It's deviant, and people assume that things must be so bad we should be pitied. My dad's not the only person who's responded this way. People keep asking me what's wrong with my life. I want to yell at them and beat them over the head, there's so much charity in their voices.

How many people in the world are 100% satisfied with their lives? Who doesn't wish for things to be a little different--to weigh a little less, to sleep a little more, to be able appreciate the good and brush off the bad? How many people wake up every day excited about three things that are going to happen? I decided I'm tired of only being 80% happy; of leaving things un-thought, un-said, and un-done in my life. So, I started this project to tie up all the loose ends. I'm not battling major depression here, I'm taking charge of my life.

The Art of Re-Framing

Since it's Friday, I have the luxury of looking back at this past week and ruminating on all of the successes and failures--and gearing up to be a much, much, much better person next week.

The biggest successes of this week haven't been about changing the way I live. Let's face it, for the most part, I live the way I do because that's what I have the time and the energy for. When I started this I had all sorts of projects in mind--exercising every day, going to bed earlier, stop watching so much TV, start cooking... As soon as I got started, I realized it wasn't possible. I never even got on the treadmill this week--but I have spent, on average, two and a half hours stuck in traffic every single day. I haven't gone to bed earlier, instead I've watched two season of Sex and the City. But, here's the thing: if I'm not changing my actions, what am I changing?

Easy. I'm changing the way I think, and that's a lot harder than it sounds. I'm what they call a "Negative Nancy." I tend to see the downside to everything. I get upset about something and suddenly everything spirals out of control and everything seems horrible and I have trouble controlling my emotions. Some days, I wake up in the morning and just feel yucky--and it ruins the entire day. I decided if I ever want to be happy, (and if I ever wanted to change the way I acted) I needed to change the way I thought and perceived the world. Otherwise, I would never have the energy, or "see the point" of acting differently. I determined to tackle the morning first, since it seems to have the biggest effect.

I have a tremendously long morning routine. It takes me about twenty minutes of face-washing and lotion to even be ready to put on make-up--I'm not slow, or even picky about the way I look, I just have very sensitive skin. The first week I was in California, the combination of make-up (which I started wearing for the internship) and the sun made my face explode into unhappy redness and peeling. So, it's a twenty-minute routine. Every morning. And, every night. So, I decided that while I was applying "cleanser" and "rescue solution" (it's really called that) to my face, I would face my day as well. What am I excited for today? I ask myself. The first day, it was nearly impossible. It was a strange revelation: well, no wonder I'm not happy during the day, if I feel like there's nothing to be excited about. I forced myself to come up with three things. The next day it got easier. And today it was easier still. At the end of the day, as I "take off the day" and brush my teeth, I ask myself, what am I grateful for? Oddly enough, the three things I'm most grateful for happening that day, are almost never the same three things I was most excited about in the morning.

Simply re-framing my day--even the most horrible, terrible day--in terms of what I was grateful for, helps me relax and get perspective on everything that has happened. It balances the day out. I've learned that people have a "negativity bias"--we stack up all the negative things that happen and get stuck only being able to see or remember negative things. (Conversely, if we are happy, we will tend to see happy things and remember happier things). By forcing myself to remember the good things that happened, I'm punching holes in my negativity bias. Just being able to name a couple good things that happened helps me remember the entire day as being more successful.

Re-framing works in almost every situation--it's just about seeing the good instead of seeing the bad, and unfortunately it doesn't come naturally. Stuck in traffic? It gives me more time to plan my next blog post. Or my screenplay. Or call my grandmother, since I didn't have time to call her back last night. I have to go into work on Friday when I know the other intern doesn't? If I didn't go into work all I would do is sit at home by myself all day. Let's face it--I would rather be at work. Or, the biggest, most difficult piece of re-framing I've had to do yet (and it took my two days) I'm in trouble because I wrote about work in my blog and people get fired over things like that? (Panic, panic, panic) Thank God, I have an understanding boss and I found out about things like this now, as an intern, before I got into the "real world" and made some very serious unintentional mistakes! (In case you didn't get it, that's my apology for not writing the past few days.)

Anyways, Friday is about "having fun." I don't know how good I am at that--especially when I eat all my meals alone. But, tonight I took a pit-stop at Trader Joe's on the way home from restocking my house-sitting house with groceries and bought myself a pizza, a molten chocolate cake, and a tiny bottle of California white wine. I haven't decided what movie to watch yet, but I'm feeling very Sex and the City.

Monday: Work

What am I expecting to get out of work this summer? Everyone keeps asking and I keeping telling them I want to learn as much as possible--but is that really it? Deep down, it feels like learning is just a means to an end. I think I want to learn because I want to fit in. I want to know if it's possible for me to fit in in this strange world of witty repartees and star-studded gossip. I know it's only the third week, but that's why I'm so sad when I'm at the studio, even though I like work. I barely understand the jokes--most of the names go completely over my head and I struggle to keep track of people. I'm so shy. I hate shy. I just clam up.

Just as I'm about to scold myself for being me, I try to remember that there's absolutely no way I'm every not going to be myself, and if I want to figure out if this career (i.e. screenwriting) will work in the long run, pretending to be someone else is the absolute worst thing I could ever do.

As for this summer... Part of knowing if I fit in is knowing whether or not I can do this whole "screenwriting" thing. Am I a screenwriter? Or, am I novelist? Or a blogger? Are they mutually exclusive? Well, the only way to know is to find out. I pitched a screenplay idea yesterday--about a nine-year-old girl and her little brother who invent a flying machine. Truthfully, I LOVE the idea. I can see it in my mind's eye and it's great. But when I try to articulate it, it completely sucks. The more I tried to pitch it, the worse it felt in my mouth. It's not my screenplay. A novel, maybe, but not my screenplay. So... Today I decided, I'm back on square one. I came out here deciding to do one of two options: write an animated feature, or a romantic comedy. Since animated features are much more complicated to make than I realized, romantic comedy it is. (Sorry David, if you're reading this).

Now, I just have to find a plot. Or a character. I'll take either one.

The Plan

Five and a half hours later, I have a plan. Identify the problem, then solve it.

The problem with a happiness project on top of a busy work week and family commitments and relationship struggles and oh-so-many-other trials and tribulations is that I don't have months to devote to each aspect of my life that I want to improve. I have three months, to be exact, and I have way more than three things that need to be worked out in that amount of time. I can't put something off because it's my "Energy" month now, and I'm going to wait to improve that until my "Relationship" month. My life is immediate.

But, I can't just tackle a laundry list of happiness demands, either. That's too overwhelming and would be discouraging.

As a compromise, I've assigned each day of the week a "theme." Monday is my "Work" day; Tuesday is "Energy," Wednesday is "Friendships," Thursday is "Relationships" and Friday is "Having Fun." I'm giving myself the weekend off, because let's face it-- I'm a working girl. I need the vacation. Every day I'm going to evaluate and think about my progress in that area of my life. This week, I'm going to think about where I want to be going for the rest of the summer. Of course, thinking about friendships doesn't stop me from doing my work, having fun, concentrating on my relationship or anything else I decide is important to my happiness. But, devoting a day of the week to think about it will help me focus on how I'm doing and what's important.

Today is Monday, that means that today I'm thinking about what I want to get out of my work. That's good, because I'm getting ready to head to the studio.

The Project, re-definined

It's four am. I've been tossing and turning since three. Finally, nine minutes ago, I decided to suck it up and get out of bed. I'm grateful to be up at four am, I told myself, applying one of the many principles from my new guide to life, The Happiness Project. 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.