Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Baby had a bad, bad year
So remember back at the beginning of 2006, when I asked that Magic 8-Ball if it was going to be a good year, and it insisted that it wasn't? And then 2006 ended up being sort of awesome anyway? Yeah, apparently that 8-Ball was just off by a year, as I can now say with some certainty that 2007 was one of the worst years in recent memory. I and everyone around me seemed to be so plagued by death, disease, heartbreak, rodents and other assorted horribleness that at times I wondered if we hadn't just stumbled into one of the bleaker chapters of the Old Testament.
So I guess it goes without saying that I've never been happier to see the ball drop on a new year than I was a few nights ago when Seacrest ushered us all into 2008. This time I'm leaving the Magic 8-Balls behind and deciding for myself that 2008 is going to be a great year. I'm not sure that willing a year to be good will actually work, but I'm sure as hell going to try.
In keeping with this spirit, I've already done a few things to help shepherd 2008 in a more positive direction, the first being to paint one wall in my bedroom a lovely shade of green. I didn't really ask for permission from my landlord before doing this, but my lease didn't expressly forbid it, and the guy at Home Depot assured me that I'd be able to paint over this particular shade easily enough when the time comes. (Of course, he also assured me that I would need more than one quart of paint to cover the entire wall, which I did not. So yeah, we'll see how that works out.)
The other new thing I'm doing is keeping a happiness journal, which is an idea I got from Elizabeth Gilbert when I saw her on Oprah a few months ago. I have no idea what I was doing watching Oprah, since I usually do not watch Oprah, nor do I usually subscribe to things that are described with a phrase as lame as "happiness journal," but I haven't yet come up with a cooler name for it. Anyway, this is basically a small 99-cent spiral notebook from Target that sits by my bed, in which I will record every night the happiest moment of my day. I tend to have a real problem with not living in the present, and it seems like maybe this will help. In describing my happiest moment from yesterday, I ended up christening the notebook with one of my favorite quotes from My So-Called Life (yep, ever since I got the DVD set for Christmas, I've been kicking it 1994-style with a renewed obsession with the show), which kind of sums up what this whole project is really about: "Every once in a while I'll have, like, a moment, when just being myself, in my life, right where I am, is, like, enough."
So there you have it--2008 is going to be a good year. Whether it likes it or not.
So remember back at the beginning of 2006, when I asked that Magic 8-Ball if it was going to be a good year, and it insisted that it wasn't? And then 2006 ended up being sort of awesome anyway? Yeah, apparently that 8-Ball was just off by a year, as I can now say with some certainty that 2007 was one of the worst years in recent memory. I and everyone around me seemed to be so plagued by death, disease, heartbreak, rodents and other assorted horribleness that at times I wondered if we hadn't just stumbled into one of the bleaker chapters of the Old Testament.
So I guess it goes without saying that I've never been happier to see the ball drop on a new year than I was a few nights ago when Seacrest ushered us all into 2008. This time I'm leaving the Magic 8-Balls behind and deciding for myself that 2008 is going to be a great year. I'm not sure that willing a year to be good will actually work, but I'm sure as hell going to try.
In keeping with this spirit, I've already done a few things to help shepherd 2008 in a more positive direction, the first being to paint one wall in my bedroom a lovely shade of green. I didn't really ask for permission from my landlord before doing this, but my lease didn't expressly forbid it, and the guy at Home Depot assured me that I'd be able to paint over this particular shade easily enough when the time comes. (Of course, he also assured me that I would need more than one quart of paint to cover the entire wall, which I did not. So yeah, we'll see how that works out.)
The other new thing I'm doing is keeping a happiness journal, which is an idea I got from Elizabeth Gilbert when I saw her on Oprah a few months ago. I have no idea what I was doing watching Oprah, since I usually do not watch Oprah, nor do I usually subscribe to things that are described with a phrase as lame as "happiness journal," but I haven't yet come up with a cooler name for it. Anyway, this is basically a small 99-cent spiral notebook from Target that sits by my bed, in which I will record every night the happiest moment of my day. I tend to have a real problem with not living in the present, and it seems like maybe this will help. In describing my happiest moment from yesterday, I ended up christening the notebook with one of my favorite quotes from My So-Called Life (yep, ever since I got the DVD set for Christmas, I've been kicking it 1994-style with a renewed obsession with the show), which kind of sums up what this whole project is really about: "Every once in a while I'll have, like, a moment, when just being myself, in my life, right where I am, is, like, enough."
So there you have it--2008 is going to be a good year. Whether it likes it or not.
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