Happiness

This Goldfrapp song comes to mind

¶ Prompt from Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write.

 

I feel like I wrote something like this before. Basically, this week’s exercise calls for a realignment. No more extreme emotion writing, simply happy. No delusions about grandeur, epic, brooding writing. No to writing that is supposed to be filled with a certain angst, a certain depression. Just happy. Clap along.

 

Cameron suggests you take a one hour bubble bath, hah, before taking on this assignment. For me, to light a few candles, a sandlewood incense, to crack open my bedroom window and listen to the gentle raindrops of the gray weather outside is enough to calm me down. I love rain. I love firelight. — Now, “List fifty things that make you happy.”

 

Writes Cameron, “Happiness is not only a mood. It is a decision. Writing our list of fifty happinesses causes us to see how simple some forms of joy are, how we can make ourselves happy in simple ways — read the Neruda poems, eat the ice cream, take time to check out the sunsets. Happiness lists are also an effective deterrent for situational depression. When the blues set in, the simple act of listing joys can help elicit some.”

 

Below is my list, but before reading it, I suggest you write yours (and share it!). Here is it:

 

1. Warm Irish Breakfast tea in the morning

2. Yerba Mate in the afternoon

3. A good book in bed

4. Mala beads

5. Hostel lounges

6. Good conversation

7. Stranger’s smile

8. Stranger dancing in the subway

9. Being read to softly

10. Many candles lit, especially prayer candles

11. Stain glass windows, when light starts to enter

12. Beach House, band

13. Nylon string guitar played well

14. Sundays

15. Left over food that still tastes good

16. A cold beer, just one, when “I’m not supposed to”

17. Origami boxes

18. Rain

19. Sharing my work

20. The rush of writing a new idea

21. The plateau of writing all day

22. The fall of finishing a story

23. Walkabouts by myself

24. Live music played well, played soulfully

25. Mango ice cream with a hidden scoop of raspberry underneath

26. Birthdays

27. That “ohh” moment on a student

28. Seeing someone act a little too self-confident, and feeling it rub off on me

29. My aloe and ivy plants, watering them, looking at them, a-hem…

30. Music videos, watching them, finding new ones

31. Sigur Ros, band, anywhere and anytime

32. Dancing at Barbarella, (barbs), club

33. Edibles, hah

34. Not working out, but being done working out

35. Running, during

36. The beach, rain or shine

37. Fresh snow, skis

38. One of the greatest “happinesses” I have ever known, sailing alone in an optimist

39. Staying up all night with good people

40. Bring a flask to a public event, even if I don’t drink, so long as it was full when I got there

41. Waking up with someone special

42. The smell of my grandparent’s apartment

43. Dollar slice of pizza

44. Finishing something important

45. Rereading these posts

46. Friendly people on a plane

47. A good sunrise

48. A bed made

49. Ironed shirts and dryer-warm pants

50. Seeing Argentina win

 

 

Bonus: This song

 

 

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