Day 2: 30 Days of Happines

I'm my second day on board of the happiness train I find myself really antsy. After one successful day and support of some of my friends I thought shit was going to be smooth sailing from here on out. I need to not mix up vehicle metaphors. Anyway, today I woke up with the vague idea that I would just do my Artist date today. For those of you who don't know what an artist date is. It comes from the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, it's about discovering your creativity. The artist date is a tool where you take yourself on a date....yeah you do it once a week and you do something fun and you don't worry and just treat yourself. I wanted to go to the tropical fish store, because I think fish stores are beautiful with the way lights in the fish tank illuminate the room. Anyway this doesn't matter, because I didn't do that today.

I'm living here

We'll come back to that. The happiness tasks go as follows.

Exercise: This went great, I executed (badass choice of words) my work out quickly. I was so proud I took my shirt off in front of the mirror.

Meditation: I wrote a lot of really poetic stuff about my meditation today but it got deleted. Anyway, it was about what a challenge it was for me to step outside of my usual thought process. I spend so much time in my head and am always thinking so hard that I'm always taken back when people I first meet describe me as shy or quiet. I have to remember that they're not privy to the over analytical dialogue constantly going on in my  head. I forget I'm not nearly as verbal in real life. I recently saw the film Before Sunset and Ethan Hawkes' character has a bit where he talks about how badly he wants to not spend time around himself. That was where I was at.


Positive experiences from yesterday: 1) The production company I work for got the chance to provide atmosphere for an outdoor production of The Tempest. We all got to just run around like clowns and act like mental patients for a few hours. The venue we were at features a large abandoned bus where me and my friend Noel had a talk that started as a heart to heart about relationships and how you can't hate yourself to talking about fucking spiders. Different kinds, like diving bell spiders that navigate inside of air bubbles, they're pretty amazing.

2) and 3) are both experiences from work. First was in the morning when I had to get my name tag replaced. I always expect to see timid DVM ladies with glasses. Instead I was greeted by this giant Keith David looking dude who seemed incredibly pissed off that I needed a new name tag. He didn't know what my ride was call, he thought it involved candy. I just found it really awesome. So the next one is when I was at my venue; the ride was down and my fellow co workers were all discussing their negative experiences working at Disney. My favorite was a story about how this guy's buddy was captain on the jungle cruise ride but was never in character and only told stories about his brother being a mall security guard. I found that fucking hilarious.

Gratitude: I was on a really awful trip recently. I was supposed to go to NYC but I ended up in NJ for reasons I'll explain later. After NJ, I ended up in Maryland with my aunt in the house by myself drinking blueberry brandy that was 50% alcohol without a hint of blueberries. I called up my friend Rachel who lives in DC and has been like my little sister for almost 10 years. She came and rescued me and brought me to DC, where I drank beer and learned about history. I thanked her for saving me.

It was hard remember to adapt today. I think it's because I wanted to do so much at once. I had all these stupid artisty ideas I wanted to do to fire up creativity. I'm not sure, if it was drinking too early or if it was Philip Seymour Hoffman's death, or reading all that shit about Woody Allen, but it just threw my day off.  I have a separate book of just artist date ideas that I consult when I'm strapped for ideas. One of them was 'listen to Rock n' Roll' that sounded simple enough then I went and fucked it up by setting a timer and trying to work on my screenplay for one hour. It was just an off day, I'm closer to finishing the script than I ever had been and I keep trying to tell myself what Hemingway says "The first draft of anything is always shit" but it's not doing it for me. It's not even that its bad, I just feel like I'm going through the motions. In my mind I'm trying to make this whimsical, zany film but when I put in on paper getting through the plot points it just felt empty as crap. The synthetic happiness approach was not at the forefront of my mind today. I tried taking a break and writing a script about a cartoon squirrel (inspired by the plastic squirrel on my desk) that didn't work.

I needed to try pull the happiness thing. What I really need to do is to get away from the fucking computer. It is odd because I have a blog now. But when it comes to trying to be creative and whimsical(I've said whimsical twice, not a good sign) I'm better when I'm out in the world. I sat down on the floor and drank beer and turned on Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and that was the kind of rock and roll I needed to listen to. All it took was getting away from the stupid computer. I spent the Superbowl trying to teach a 4 yr old to play Apples to Apples. I don't know what the message of today was except maybe Stevie Wonder's Innerversions is the real secret to happiness. I guess it was actually a success, I felt like my brain broke for a bit but all I needed to do was re configure my senses.