Take a photo
Seek out new music
I learned about Bahamas from a weekly playlist site called Noon Pacific. Bright and breezy guitar-driven music from a Canadian named Afie Jurvanen.
Listen
Take a multivitamin
This was really challenging, you guys, but I somehow found the strength to succeed.
Practice piano
Keep a happiness jar
Only needing to record one day's happiest moment, the activity had to count. I can't say I was in an especially joyful mood on Wednesday. Work was kind of blah. No fun plans scheduled after.
I examined every experience throughout the day, mentally weighing its happiness. Was my happiest moment when I stepped out outside for a walk at lunchtime? When I drew a warm bath when I got home? When I sliced up cheese speckled with morel mushrooms? When I chuckled while reading some Mitch Hedberg jokes?
Maybe I should listen to an upbeat song. Would that make me sufficiently happy?
Maybe I should call someone. Would that?
I biked to a pub in the evening. Maybe I would have some delightful encounter there. But no young man with charming quips and wiggly eyebrows swung by my table. I instead spent a quiet hour on my laptop writing about losing a close friend in the post-college scattering. I had set out to delve into a more pleasant subject, but writing topics morph into what they will.
Leaving the pub I realized I had forgotten to grab my bike lights so I would be walking home to avoid careening down the large hill in the dark. That was okay. Home was only a mile or so away, and the air temperature was an ideal 75 degrees. I looked up at the half moon and felt the wind caress my cheeks. Was this my happiest moment now?
Was all this scrutiny actually detracting from the joy?*
Walking my bike down the sidewalk, I heard a loud voice coming from the building to my left. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, in a former schoolhouse marked with a local landmark plaque. I had seen the little sign saying that this VFW post meets at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, but I never gave much thought to what happens at those meetings.
Sidling up to the well-lit windows, I didn't see anyone in the wallpapered rooms, yet the voice continued to boom, only barely muffled by a wall.
“G-12. That's gee one two. B-39. That's bee three nine. [pause] We have a winner!”
I grinned to myself in the shadows, continuing on my way and thinking of the unseen veterans in the back room playing bingo and of the one who just won. I think this was my happiest moment.
This, and that Hedberg joke about how rice is great if you want to eat 2,000 of something. That was pretty funny.
*And speaking of all these questions, wasn't there a novel written entirely in the interrogative a few years ago? I didn't read that book, did I? Did I read an excerpt? Or did I just skim some review? Doesn't this seem like something I should remember?