2009 June

Is It Really That Simple? (Warning: Self-Indulgence Ahead!)

On the road to Happiness

I’ve been in a little bit of a funk lately. I know—shocker. It’s not like I’ve been keeping that little tidbit to myself.

I’ve been wrestling with the whole job situation (which is finally resolved), and I feel like I went a few rounds with Brock Lesnar in a UFC cage fight. I feel battered, bruised, worn out and a little…blah. In a word: Unhappy.

A couple of nights ago Bill and I were talking about all of this. I was trying to explain what was bothering me and what was rattling around in my head, and while he’s understanding and supportive, he and I approach things very differently. Sometimes I’m not sure he “gets me.”

His response to all of this? “You just have to make up your mind and be happy.”

Really? It’s that simple? Just make up your mind and that’s that. Well, shit, why the hell didn’t I think of that?

I clearly don’t come from a place of happy. Which isn’t to say I’m constantly unhappy. Or even depressed. But I get do get those feelings of…meh.

Where I get stuck...

Not to belittle Bill’s advice, but I do believe that we’re hardwired to either be easy-going and go-with-the-flow people, or we’re more anxious and stressed people. I’m clearly the latter. I think it’s like height. No matter how much I wish I were taller, I will always be 4’11″. No matter how much I wish I were easy going and relaxed, I’m the Glass is Half Empty girl. Period. Do I like it? Not really. Am I satisfied with that? No. It blows. It’s a crappy way to wade through life. But I don’t believe it’s a simple as making up your mind. I think it’s got to be more complicated than that. If it’s not, I’m clearly doing something wrong.

Wikipedia defines happiness as “a state of mind or feeling such as contentment, satisfaction, pleasure or joy.” (Yeah, I know, this shouldn’t really be my source, but whatever.)

Using that definition, I get satisfaction from working hard and doing a good job. I get pleasure from spending time with my husband and friends and family and Gracie. All of the things researchers say are keys to happiness. But joy? I don’t know. That’s a tough one for me. Personally, I think joy is a spiritual term, one that I’m not connected with right now. To experience joy you have to fully open up to life, which I’m clearly not doing.

But I think it’s much deeper than satisfaction. Engagement and meaning are crucial to happiness (and to joy), and that’s where I fall short. Life is dynamic. It’s constantly changing and evolving. I want to evolve with it. The irony is that I’m so busy “evolving” that I’m regressing. It’s not that I’ve checked out. It’s that I get hung up. I dissect everything. I have to analyze, examine, mull, ponder and chew on it. I tend to overlook the things that matter because I obsess over what really doesn’t. I am not fully engaged in life because my head is stuck firmly up my own ass.

Bill is much better at letting things go and getting on with his life. He is fully engaged and has found meaning. He’s better able to focus on what matters: relationships and service. He finds meaning in his family, his friends and service to the community. He’s able to get beyond the bullshit and minutiae of life and actually embrace life.

This is where his Julie the Cruise Director personality and my Gregory House personality collide.

So how do I get from where I am to where he is? How do I pay attention to the happiness that I know is there? How do I stay focused on that? That’s the million dollar question. I wish there was a switch that I could just flip. Some people recommend keeping a Gratitude Journal. The theory being that if you stop and consciously think of the good and record it, you will become happier. There are versions of that all over the web. I’ve even tried to do it, but I gave up on it.

And it’s not that I don’t feel I have anything to be happy about. (I’m cynical, but not that cynical.) I think my problem is that I always want more. I always want to do better, be better. Instead of being satisfied with where I am and what I’m doing, I wonder what else I can do, how much better I can be. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t believe ambition is a dirty word. But there’s a stepping stone between that and happiness and for some reason I keep trying to leap frog over that.

Where I want to be...

Do I just wake up tomorrow and commit to being happy? Can it really be that simple? Is it more in what you do and how you go about it? Or is it part of your “factory wiring” as Lesley calls it?

Filed Under: Apropos of Absolutely Nothing, Grace In Small Things, Julie the Cruise Director, Just A Thought, Life, Stupid Shit

Random Thoughts on TV, Wind Chimes and Cayenne Pepper

posted by Mo 9 Comments

Music to my ears

This weekend we discovered a plant nursery here in town. I shouldn’t say “discovered” because it’s not exactly a big secret that we uncovered. I’ve passed this a million times, but we’ve never stopped in until this weekend.

We went in to buy a palm tree and some flowers to plant in a shady spot in our yard. It was a breezy day and while we were walking around the arbor, we heard a little tinkling sound that was so pleasant. Hanging in the garden they had two of the biggest and most lovely sounding wind chimes playing a melodic symphony prompted by the breeze.

I love wind chimes. I have about 8 sets of them hanging in various parts of my front and back yards. (However, when the Santa Ana winds blow through, I run around ripping them down because they sound like someone’s banging spoons on a pot). But I’ve never heard anything like these. It turns out that they are like the Bentley of wind chimes. Hand tuned each in a musical scale.

This one? The one Bill bought for me? It’s 50 inches tall (long?) and tuned to the scale of A.

My backyard is now like a Zen garden.

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Gracie’s version of Zen is digging up all the new plants I so painstakingly planted.

Last night I sprinkled cayenne pepper in my garden. Somehow I think it’ll be the last time Gracie finds peace in digging.

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Sunday night I watched Iron Chef America before bed. It was Battle Octopus. All night long I dreamed of work and octopus. I had nightmares of being strangled by my bosses tentacles. Clearly, I have some issues to work out.

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I bought a domain name for this blog (without the wordpress.com part of the name) and I bought some hosting space as well. But I am too dumb (or most likely too impatient) to figure out how to set the whole thing up. Which doesn’t bode well for my future career as a web designer.

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In 38 days Bill and I are going to Las Vegas. Can you tell I’m excited? I’m so ready to spend four days doing nothing but hanging by the pool, reading, drinking, eating, playing craps and, oh yeah, the whole point of this trip—celebrating Bill’s birthday. It IS his weekend, but I think we’re both excited to get the hell out of Dodge for a few days. No work, no bullshit, nothing but a good time (do I detect a Poison song in there somewhere?).

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I watched Nurse Jackie on Showtime last night. It’s my new favorite show. And it’s not even a crappy reality series. It’s dark, sharp, snarky, and a little wicked and twisted. Edie Falco is amazing as the drug-addicted nurse who seems to struggle with being a saint and…not.

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To read more Random, The Un Mom is the place to go.

Filed Under: Apropos of Absolutely Nothing, Premature Ejacublogging®, Random Tuesday Thoughts, Stupid Shit, TV

Happy 1st Blogoversary

posted by Mo 14 Comments

Today is the 1-year anniversary of my blog.

The Daily Snark is 1 today!

I can’t believe it’s been a year already. I could spew all the cliches about time flying, and it seeming like yesterday. But I won’t—even though they’d all be true.

I started The Daily Snark because I needed a creative outlet. I wanted—scratch that—I desperately needed a place to go that was my own. A place where I could be my sarcastic self. A place where I could get back into the habit of writing. And where I could write whatever I wanted.

When I started the blog, I had exactly one reader, my real-life friend Lesley from Um…What?? For a couple of weeks she was literally the only person who’d click over to read what I wrote, no matter how lame, how mundane. She was my biggest cheerleader. I think she even paid her mom to click over occasionally so it looked like I actually had some readers. Then I picked up a few readers from the WordPress.com home page. I was giddy over getting a couple of hits a day. And then I’d get a few more. And I’d think, Damn, this is awesome. I am the shit. I was all, “Dooce, you’d better watch your back. There’s a new blogger in town.”

Snort. Um, yeah.

About a month or so after I started this blog, I finally told my husband. He’s very private and I wasn’t sure he’d be thrilled that I was spewing our personal life all over the interwebs so I didn’t tell him at first. I’d furtively type away when I could get a few minutes, and he never wondered why I suddenly became so interested in my laptop. But one night in the middle of our vacation I was feeling no pain from all the rum punch we were drinking in the Cayman Islands. As we sat at the bar on the dock of our resort and suddenly I was all: Soguesswhat?IhaveablogandIactuallyhavereadersandeverything!

Once I explained what a blog was and how much fun I was having writing again (and promised not to write about our sex life or any other super personal details), he was very supportive of it. In fact, he told just about everyone he knew.

Over the past year, like every other blogger out there, I’ve struggled with the To Blog or Not To Blog dilemma, I’ve been obsessed with blog stats, stressed about not posting regularly enough. I try to remember that this is supposed to be fun. Sometimes it is. Other times, it’s a struggle. But I love that I have this place to come to write about whatever’s on my mind, no matter how random, how snarky or how serious. And I appreciate every single one of you who come by here.

Here are a few highlights from the last year:

1. Neil Diamond may have nearly ruined my marriage, but he brought me a crap load of readers. This most gets a ridiculous amount of Google searches, nearly a year after I wrote it.

2. After posting about my Bejeweled Blitz addiction, I realized I’m not alone. Millions of you out there need an intervention as well. I get about 50 hits a day on this post alone.

3. I think this post about Costco is one of my favorites. If you’ve ever been, you know why. If you haven’t, I’ve probably scared you away.