My Happiness Project is a personal quest to bring more happiness into my everyday life.  As I continue to explore, experiment and write about My Happiness Project, I hope that you would share your happy experiences and thoughts with me.

In my last Happiness Project blog post I talked about how watching a favorite sitcom can make me laugh; reading humorous material is an even better happiness boost.    For instance, Lisa Kogan always makes me laugh while reading her monthly article in O, The Oprah Magazine.    I actually keep a file folder called “Funny Things” that holds all the clippings that I find so funny that I want to read them again.   As part of my Happiness Project to “laugh some more”, I pulled out that folder and re-read some favorites.

The essay “Woof: A Plea of Sorts” by  George Saunders is part of his book, The Braindead Megaphone and while I didn’t enjoy the whole book, this essay is brilliant.

Written from the perspective of the dog, the essay is quirky and most definitely strange.  And I admit, not funny to everyone.  My husband does not think this essay is funny.  As I told you, we don’t share the same sense of humor.   He read it and said, “cute” with a faint smile on his face.   On the other hand, I was laughing so hard that I was shaking, crying and dripping snot.   I cut it out the September 2007 issue of O Magazine, but  I couldn’t find the essay online anywhere to share with you, just an except on Google Books.   Click on the Google Books link and see if it makes you laugh too.  If so, we can most definitely be friends.

Another article that made it into my “Funny Things” folder, but also (more disturbing) my “hmm…that’s really not a bad idea” file in my brain is “My Last Party” by Linda S. Amstutz.

I find it funny because I would so do this!  I cut it out from Skirt, but Linda also has it on her blog, under the title “Over My Dead Body.”   Read it and tell me, do you find this morbid or funny?   Your answer will probably alter the course of our friendship.

What do you read to make you laugh?  Please share; I can always use a good laugh!

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Other posts about My Happiness Project:

My Happiness Project: Laugh More

My Happiness Project

© 2011, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

My Happiness Project is a personal quest to bring more happiness into my everyday life.  As I continue to explore, experiment and write about My Happiness Project, I hope that you would share your happy experiences and thoughts with me.

I absolutely love to laugh; don’t you?  Laughter is a great stress reliever and a mood lifter.  It’s also a good relationship binder; I have the closest relationships with people with whom I share laughter.   While my husband and I don’t have the same sense of humor (in movies, TV, books or any comedic entertainment), we both try to find humor and lightness in everyday situations.  As a family we joke around together and most of us find it funny, most of the time; just check out some of our road trip videos on YouTube.   But sometimes if I’m grinding too hard, I forget to look for the funny.   Or maybe nothing is funny and life really does suck today.   In that case, I need some help.  In my new search for everyday happiness, I’ve remembered some things that have made me laugh, like sitcoms.

I don’t watch much television, but when I do, I watch sitcoms.  My favorite shows used to be Frasier and Seinfeld; now it’s Modern Family.  Scrubs was another favorite show; it was just plain silly.  I saw the episode below on the airplane and I was silently laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face.  It was so funny to me that during the taxi ride from the airport I thought of this scene and laughed again–audibly, very loudly–for the entire ride home.  My family just stared and pronounced me crazy as usual.

The entire episode is in 3 parts on YouTube.  This is the 2nd part. The 6:45 mark is where I completely lose it.  Still.

Is it just me or is that HILARIOUS?

Do you have a favorite television show or scene that always makes you laugh?

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Other posts about My Happiness Project:

My Happiness Project

© 2011, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

Are you happy?  Are you living your life in such a way that you are maximizing all your happiness potential?

I posed this question to myself while reading the book The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin.  It’s not that I’m unhappy, but reading about Gretchen’s year of happiness-seeking made me want to figure out exactly what makes me happy and how to bring more of that joy into my everyday life.  I highlighted many passages on my iPad as I read, but this is was the jumping off point, the part that made me think about my own life:

I was suffering from…..-a recurrent sense of discontent and almost a feeling of disbelief.  ”Can this be me?”

“Is this really it?” I found myself wondering and answering, “Yep, this is it.”

How could I discipline myself to feel grateful for my ordinary day?  How could I set a higher standard for myself as a wife, a mother, a writer, a friend?  How could I let go of everyday annoyances to keep a larger, more transcendent perspective?

Yup, that’s exactly how I feel: not unhappy, but as my son says, “meh.”  I don’t want or need to make any drastic changes in my life; I like most of my everyday life (my husband and kids, I’ll keep them) and what I don’t like, I accept.  I just don’t think that I am mindfully enjoying or creating as many happy moments in the midst of my busy, chaotic life as I can.  Life is weighing pretty hard on me right now.  My natural inclination is just to “man up” and “get it done” (whatever it is that day), but that doesn’t necessarily bring me happiness.

Gretchen Rubin was very methodical about her Happiness Project; she chose a theme for each month and concentrated on making that particular area in her life happier.  She also charted her progress (or decline) in order to be accountable to the project.  At first glance this is right up my alley because I love to chart and plan and organize, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that sometimes I get in my own way.  This is something that I need to just do–not plan.  I jotted down notes as I read the book and came up with some immediate action steps–which I will explore in subsequent blog posts–but I am sort of free-styling my Happiness Project.    I also plan to read What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and The Joy Diet by Martha Beck.  Coincidentally “read more” is one of my Happiness Goals, so I’m grooving already.

Do you want to take this journey with me?   I would love the company.   If you need tools, Gretchen Rubin has them on her website, or you can free-style it like me.   If you are happy enough already–just so giddy that you can’t even stand yourself anymore–then you can read about my quest and help me get to my happy place.  I just bet “helping others” is on your Happy List.

Get ready.  Get set.  Be happy!

© 2011, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

Let me say this first: I like Live With Regis And Kelly.    I have watched Kelly evolve from playing a rebel teen on All My Children to her current co-host spot and I have rooted for her all the way.  I think that if we ever met, we would be friends.  And Regis is fantastic; I will be sad to see him leave.  So, I like the show.  I don’t watch it too often because I have a rule about watching television during the day, but sometimes I will watch the opening banter (my favorite part) while I hoop.

I watched this morning and Ashton Kutcher was subbing for Regis.  This is a transcript of the banter between Kelly and Ashton (the transcript is from Livedash.com; I don’t know if it is exactly word-for-word accurate, but I heard it myself and it’s pretty on point):

00:05:07	The woman that was texting and could have slipped anything and meanwhile knell fell on a city fine.
00:05:15	Get off the twitter!
00:05:16	Look around!
00:05:18	[Laughter] kelly: how dare you?
00:05:22	Had us hooked on twitter as a nation and then tell us to get off the twitter?
00:05:28	I felt responsible for it.
00:05:29	I’m going to get subpoenaed.
00:05:30	I’m going to end up in courpt it’s going to a bad, bad day.
00:05:35	I cannot believe that they do not give you money for twitter.
00:05:39	At twitter.
00:05:41	You made this twitt thing happen.
00:05:43	I helped the twitter thing happen.
00:05:45	Here’s the greatest thing about it.
00:05:47	No, they don’t give me money but I’m connected from the streams.
00:05:50	So I see the coolest new stuff in technology before anybody sees i.

There it is, the line in bold that made me I drop my hoop and start tweeting myself.  Ashton Kutcher “made” Twitter?  Excuse me?   I don’t think so!

Nothing against Ashton.  I don’t know him and I’m sure he’s a great guy.  His celebrity-dom, his trillion Twitter followers–I don’t begrudge him any of it.  More power to him.  And yes, I’m sure he somehow helped bring Twitter out of Geekdom and into Mainstream America, but he didn’t “make” Twitter.   Twitter was made by ALL OF US IN SOCIAL MEDIA!

We who chat with each other so much that we actually become friends and step out of the social media anonymous bubble and  meet up In Real Life.  Like @dcanoli who upon meeting Twitter followers for the first time greets them like old friends. Or @hangingwitmrsc who is planning a trip this summer just to see her Twitter pals.

We moms like @theblogrollers and @banteringblonde who have learned how to turn social media into a business while still being present enough to attend to our children.

We business masterminds like my husband @keyinfluencer who makes his living showing major brands how to use Twitter effectively–not to pimp out their customers, but to develop real relationships with them.  Or @mariohouston who has figured out how to walk that fine line between tweeting about his career in telecommunications and authentically as himself.

We visionaires like @brokesocialite, a Twitter personality in her own right, who saw a void in social media conferences and created one of her own.

I could go on forever…..through the whole Twitter community.  We–all of us who use social media–made Twitter!  We made Twitter by using it every day, all day, to entertain, inform and engage.

@mariohouston created the hashtag #IAmSocialMedia and I’ve been using it all day.  If you believe that YOU are social media, use it too.

And chant.  Chant like Jesse Jackson while clicking your computer mouse in the air.

I Am.

Social Media.

© 2011, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

Today I’m participating in Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop: 3.) It has been said that kids these days are pushed into too many extra-curricular activities and are not given the freedom to play and be bored and to use their imaginations. Is this true?

I dont’ know if this is universally true or not because I’m not all up in people’s business to know what their kids are doing after school, but I know that it’s not true of my kids.  I purposely do not put my kids in too many extra-curricular actives because:  A). I don’t like driving them to said activities and B.) I do think they need time to “be bored” and use their imagination.  Of course, this only happens if I restrict access to television and the computer.   But even during the summer months when they are mostly at home, they find things to do both inside and outside to keep themselves occupied.

In his downtime, my son has taught himself how to pay the acoustic guitar and keyboard.  He doesn’t read as much as he used to, but he has taken up reading Harry Potter to his sister, which means that the are spending time together as well.  I like that.

Both of my kids love to play with our puppy when they are at home; he’s like their own living stuffed animal.  When they are bored, they will pull out the Dog Tricks book and try to teach Chili Dawg a new trick.  Last week when we were snowed in, we taught him this trick:

My daughter is an artist and spends most of her free time creating.   She creates elaborate hairdos for her American Girl dolls, she makes friendship bracelets for everyone (even the dog) and draws for hours.  Here’s an art piece that she made from materials in the recycling bin:

One of her favorite made-up games is “Spa.”   Unfortunately for me this spa is more interested in planning and marketing than it is in the actual spa services; my foot rub lasts about 30 seconds. The creation of the spa is the most fun for my daughter: she creates an  elaborate menu of spa treatments, mixes up special lotion, fixes snacks, colors signs and even makes a credit card scanner.   The entire spa creation can take her several hours.   This was one of the ways that she kept herself busy during Snowmageddon 2011 last week.  And she sewed too.  She made pillows for everyone, a toy for Chili Dawg and this cover for my Apple keyboard.  It even has a velcro closure at the top.

See? Bored kids are creative kids!

Visit Mama Kat’s Losin It to write a prompt of your own.

© 2011, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.