Choice: Happiness

I don't know about you guys, but my life is pretty stressful.  Like, I have two jobs and a boyfriend and a business finance class (ick) which if I pass will lead to my readmission to a CSU in the fall (double ick) and rent to pay and The Walking Dead to catch up on and hamsters to feed and friends to flake on and SO MUCH STRESS.  I'm being a little overdramatic, but you get it.  Here are some thoughts and examples of finding "happy places" that I was thinking over earlier.

1. It doesn't have to be a PHYSICAL place, so
2. a TV show.  The Pokémon animated series is now on Netflix, FYI, and I'm pretty sure they can never take Family Guy away from us.
3. a song or album.  If you don't have one, try John Mayer's Stop This Train.  All of his music is generally soothing, but this song will change everything.  Trust me.
4. a food?  Really though, as fat as that sounds, sometimes things can be fixed simply with an entire box of Kraft mac n' cheese all for yourself or a tub of Ben and Jerry's or a box of Girl Scout cookies.  Bonus points for nostalgia: eating something you liked when you were a kid or had on a particularly happy occasion is the BEST.
5. okay, a physical place too; mine include a park bench at Venice Beach, the zoo, the animation studios in Disney California Adventure, and Sprinkles Cupcakes, to name a few.  The best one is home.  I'm fortunate to have two that make me very happy, my cozy little Anaheim apartment and my warm, beautiful Salida home.  If your home isn't one of your happy places, you're doing something wrong.
and 6. my favorite, a memory.  Because you can't always put headphones on or run to the grocery store or spend a day in bed watching movies.  Memories can't be taken away or corrupted, unless we alter them ourselves.  When they're bad memories, sometimes that's the only way to cope.  But the good ones, the good ones can be a light on our darkest days.  The ones in which you're sitting in your living room with your family, watching Modern Family and eating chocolate cake, your dog asleep with her head in your lap.  The ones in which you take a quiet, warm-weather evening walk and come home with a handful of lilacs and some pure, honest poetry.  The ones in which you and your best friend get lost floating down the river and walk what might be three hours to get back to the truck, sunburnt and dusty and stomachs sore from laughing.  The one in which a trusted friend, grown from high school emo companion to beautiful, independent woman, is walking down the aisle to Weezer's Island In The Sun, and he's holding you close and quietly singing the words in your ear, and at that EXACT moment you know you could never be happier with anyone else, and that you can't wait for the day when you're the one walking down the aisle and he's the one standing at the end of it, beaming back at you.

These are my happy places.  It's hard to share them with you, because they're mine and none of you will ever see them like I did.  But I hope they help you find your own.  Happiness is a right.  You deserve it.