Like a fish (or duckling) to water

This is what I want to remember about my first ceremony:

The Twin meeting me at the train station, lit up by the joy of one-half day of school left before the summer officially begins, and by the joy of happy hour and her hilarious friends. We took our customary chatting-and-cackling-the-whole-way train ride back to her apartment.

At her apartment, I rehearsed my ceremony for her, and she gave me notes, and also gave me the giggles.

As I lay in her bed that night, my eyes were wide open, my heart was beating in my chest, but it felt good. I had to keep telling myself, "this is a gift you're giving" and that made me not think so much about myself but why I wanted to be there in the first place.

Which is, to help people. To be a part of people's joy and love. To try to notice beauty. To do something meaningful, for myself and others (maybe the "others" part is what makes it meaningful).

I told the Twin I tried to think of it as being excited more so than nervous. She said "You were born for this!"

It was in a beautiful garden at the Queens Botanical Garden. It was hot, the occasional plane passed overhead, guests heard a mama duck and ducklings quacking.

The actual ceremony itself went by so quickly and for the most part, as planned. You know how it is when you perform something - I was just caught up in making sure the moving parts kept moving, and didn't really have a chance to take it all in. But I was glad to have The Twin and friends there, and she seemed to have good things to say.

Twin and Co. dropped me off at the subway.

The way I felt riding the 7 train looking out at the buildings, listening to a happy song on my ipod - that's a scene I want played on the movie montage of triumphant moments of my life. I felt proud and happy and my cup was just runnething over everywhere.

What fun! A few days ago I was telling AJ about how I came to decide to be a Celebrant. And in addition to thinking I would like it, and be good at it, and find it meaningful. But it was also kind of a risk, and the first thing I ever decided to do entirely on my own, and some might think it kind of a random thing to do. And I was telling AJ, I wasn't 100% certain about it, but there was a point where I just decided I would do it. So I did.

It all stemmed from my own pursuit of happyishness - and I am pleased to report that from where I'm sitting, here on the megabus back to Philly from New York, caught in Shore traffic - that this out and out happiness has everything to do, like Winston Churchill put it, not with what I get, but with what I give. To be able to be yourself, do what you enjoy, and use your strengths for the benefit of other people - I'm pretty sure the secret of life is wrapped somewhere up in that idea.

I was thinking of calling my future/nascent/currently-being-born business Inspired Ceremonies. And in fact I think I will, because that's exactly how I feel right now: inspired.

C'mon Get Happyish

I decided to change the name of my blog. I realized that what was preventing me from sharing it with a wider audience (although my current audience of one, The Twin, will always be among my best) was that the title was just too earnest. Some days I am that earnest, but not all the time. Sometimes I like to land sassy side up.

Why Happyish? For one, I believe in setting achievable goals. For two, you would not believe how many blogspot domain names involving happiness are already taken.

Not to say that one couldn't sail right past happyish into the wide wide world of full-on, balls-out happi*ness* some days, but why set yourself up to fall short of the mark on days that are, all things considered, slightly above average. If you happen to knock it out of the park once in a while with straight up joy, all the better.

I think it acknowledges the reality that although it would be nice, you can't walk around in a effervescent glow of happiness at all times. Life is tricky; sh*t happens; happiness is slippery. So if at the end of the day you do all the adding and subtracting and wind up with a positive number, and overall you are happyish, then great. There are a lot more Greek Tragedy-esque ways it could've turned out. I mean, just read the newspaper. Happyish is nothing to sniff at.

A Postcard from Petulance

Greetings from the middle of Travelapalooza with The Parent Company. In many ways I have been dreading this week for a long time: a presentation to make to people I'd never met about a topic I don't know much about; two important deadlines in addition, and not a lot of time to work on them; early mornings (never a strength for me) that include a weekend day (a personal blasphemy); being away from my routine and my plants and rituals; wearing control-top hose; and I'll be honest, Bossman? He snores. Loud.

The tricky part of working for the Parent Company is that it's no trouble at all to stick me in a hotel room with them, thereby forcing 24-7 togetherness, which can be lovely, like the dinner and conversation I had with Bossman, or it can be, frankly, a little cramped (e.g. Bossman's choice of the infomercial for "Celtic Woman" as background music at this moment, which as far as I can tell is a lot of really perky women, presumably Celtic, dancing around in prom dresses while playing the violin?) . I'm not hatin' on the choice for his particular life's situation, I'm just saying that a supertogetherness trip such as this doesn't really give me as much of a chance to get away to do my own thang, as it were. And let's be honest, you can have a lot in common with anyone and still not want to do the exact same thing at the exact same time as them at all times for three days straight. The possible exception here is the Twin.)

This trip is something I've been fretting over for the last few days. Naturally, I couldn't just leave it at dread, I needed to add a little soupcon of guilt on top for color. I live in fear of being held ungrateful; the threat of being told I'm acting like a spoiled brat is the kind of epithet that has keeps me suffering in silence for many moons. I have a hard time complaining; I have a hard time not complaining.

So I will disclaim with the following: it's a good job; I like the (usually) flexible hours; it's interesting work and I don't spend my days feeling like I'm wasting away in margaritaville; i've been given a lot of trust/responsibility which it normally takes much longer to earn in a professional setting except that I kind of have a long-standing relationship with the Bosses, what with them also being my parents; also, it's a recession, I'm lucky to have a job at all, etc. etc.

That said... I'm having a hard time admitting that I'm dissatisfied with the current status of things. Which is, whirlwind pace, 6am wakeups, long hours over the powerpoint, short turnarounds, tight deadlines, pressure, stress.

I'll be honest wich'a , this job appealed to me on the grounds that it would be...um, the opposites of those things. Make some copies, schedule some appointments, write up some reports, then go home and live your life.

It almost feels like sacrilege to say that. I am the daughter-slash-employee of two very committed, passionate, motivated, hard-working, hard-driving, high-expecting, high-achieving, long-distance sprinting people. In one sense you could say they are now living out their life's aspirations, making the most of careers they have worked hard in and sacrificed for most of their lives, paths and lives which they have chosen for themselves. So if homies are doing the all-night transatlantic consultant shimmy in the pursuit of achieving their career ambitions, it makes sense.

But pour moi? It's not, you know, like that. And I hear them, I already hear all the arguments in favor of said business trip: that it needs to be done, it's good experience, it's seafood dinner, it's travel, it's the opportunity to see knew places and get paid, work is work that's why they call it work. I hear all this, and none of it's untrue.

Buh like...I'm sorry, it's still not my jam. It's as if my momployer and dadployer are really accomplished collectors of an incredibly rare and well-regarded collection of, I don't know, bird's nests, and I totally respect that and I can groove with that. But they're all "Isn't this great? Don't you want to see a whole 'nother building full of these totally different bird's nests? Don't you want to drive all night to go to this really important nest-collecting area and then hang around with bird's nest collectors for three days talking shop? Isn't this rad?"

It's like, uh, homies? Again, much respect for your passion and for the importance of bird's nests, and I am genuinely glad that you have something with which you are like a pig in mud, but the answer to those questions? Is nooottt reaaallllly.

Look, part of it is generational. The babyboomers are all about work, it's what gives life meaning and pizazz. But how to explain that for me, it's non-work that gives life meaning and pizzaz. It's not that I have something so all-fired important to do that I can't suck it up and go live in a hotel for two nights. But for me, this stuff like mucking around with blogs, and listening to music, and having farting contests with Spangles, and eating sushi with friends, and sleeping and walking around watching the city and reading stuff, is what's important to me. Life, man! The good life! Fun, pleasure, meaning!

I found this web site over the weekend with links to all these articles about "my generation," (that is, Generation Y), and apparently one of our main characteristics is a commitment to "work/life balance" and having fun. I'll say that I highly doubt those articles were written by a Gen Y member, because I hafta say some of them sounded a little...judge-y.

It's about preference, people, it's about lifestyle. I will reserve judgment about what might look to me, frankly, to be a busy, stress-y, crazy choice of life, if you reserve judgment about what might look to you like a life a shirking responsibility, entitlement, unwillingness to do the hard work that's required.

What I'm saying is, required for effing what? I won't even indulge in the ranting rave about what can we really believe in in this bankrupt world of unethical corporations that are constantly looking for ways to dick you over for fun and profit and terrorist attacks and joblessness and politicians who can't keep it n their pants etc. etc. I mean honestly society, what have you done for me lately? Why should I feel any kind of allegiance to you? Doesn't it make perfect sense for me to be looking out for number one, in particular my brunch preferences? As one of these articles pointed out, my formative years had a big old flaming set of towers hanging over them, and all I know is that what we reached for at a time like that was not our WidgetCorp key cards. It was each other.

What all of this might just be a roundabout way of saying, and then I swear I'll let it go, is I wish the Bosses would acknowledge that this trip, perks though there may be, is not how, if given the choice, I would spend my time. And that for them, it kinda is.

Long story long, I felt I did a solid presentation today that still allowed me to be honest about my level of expertise (or lack thereof.) I just kinda decided a) as an experienced tour guide, if there's one thing I can do it's speak publicly, and 2) all I can do is go out there and speak my truth, such as it is. And now I've got the headphones in with the inspirational music playing, jammies on, broiled seafood combo platter in the belly, and I'm just riffin' out in blogworld, so it appears I'm going to make it to another day.

I just have to remind myself that it's a work in progress, and I'm just going to keep working on some of these HR aspects until we have all reached a situation of mutual satisfaction. For one thing I already talked about "working from home" more.

To conclude, I decided that I should sharpen my skills as an optimist by starting a new feature on the blog called The Twist o' Optimist - or maybe The Upshot - wherein, after a long, winding and whiny post like this one I try to sprinkle a little fairy dust on it, and see, if not perhaps the best in things, the better.

So, for example: this hotel mattress is durned fluffy; Brandi Carlile is rocking my world right now with her lyrics about have you ever wandered lonely through the woods; I'm typing this on my brand new computer that's all mine and I'm not even plugged into a power source!; I got to wear my big-girl pin striped skirt; I got some new decorating ideas from the hotel; and at least tomorrow I don't have to wake up at 6am.

It's something, my friends. It's something.

In which the relation of the story of an unexpected gift transforms into rumination on the nature of inspiration

An everyday miracle occurred yesterday, in the sense that it happened not as a result of divine intervention but was a product of real live human effort and love.

I came home to get a few things before Gumbo Night at Spangles's house, and there on the steps was a tantalizing book-shaped cardboard package from MajorOnlineBookSeller.com. I always check the name on these packages left in the stairwell, even if I'm not expecting anything, because I'm a nosy neighbor. Inexplicably, it was for me! For me? My first thought was, great, I bet this is some sort of scam.

But when I brought it upstairs and opened it i found, much to my ferklempt-ting, that it was a brand new hardback copy of The Happiness Project, mentioned as an unaffordable luxury in an earlier post! Since this blog only has one reader at the moment, and I know who she is, I knew this surprise (but not surprising) expression of love came from The Twin. I will leave you to make your own connections as to the sterling character and generosity of heart of said individual, because in my opinion the internet isn't big enough to contain such a subject.

I have already begun to read it, and I'm two months in to her year-long project. (The author, Gretchen Rubin is speaking in Philadelphia in two weeks, too! Guess who will be there with her copy of the book!)

I will hold off on a full blown book review at this point, but preliminary findings suggest that, much to my relief, she has not written the be-all end-all book about happiness after which another one need never be written. There are things I disagree with, methods I question, ways that I would do it differently. My Happiness book remains to be written, my own tune still to be hammered out - as with all of ours as individuals. As she points out, each one of our lives, at least here in the Free World, can be their own Happiness Project.

One of the great things about wanting to create things and taking on enormous amorphous topics like Happiness, is that you never get it completely right. There is always more to be said, a different way to paint the picture that would be more accurate, more beautiful, truer. This is mostly unacknowledged brilliance of the Great Hunger - it keeps you awake and on your toes, keeps you striving, keeps you moving toward the horizon, certain that the answer is just over that next ridge. It's great, because if you're moving you're not stuck, even if that movement comes with this unsettled feeling of incompleteness, of wanting more. I've felt stuck too before in life, and the hunger is by far the more lively option.

I remember when I took a ceramics class as a teenager, as I learned all the different techniques and types of clay and firing and glaze, feeling overwhelmed as I realized the infinite possibilities. You could stay in a clay studio for an entire lifetime and never try out all the different possibilities, never finish all the ideas. And that's great! That feeling that there are too many ideas rushing through your head - that's the feeling of inspiration. It can be anxiety producing if you try to cling to each one and hoard it like a gold bouillon piece. The other option is just to stand there in the middle of the shower and enjoy getting soaked, be thankful for the rain, catch a few drops in your mouth and let the rest roll off of you, trusting that the source and patterns and reasons for rain are far beyond your capacity for comprehension. I think the reason get passionate about anything is precisely this sense of infinite possibilities, the sense that no matter how deep you dig you'll never finish the hole, but there's great stuff down there all the same.