Month: June 2011

23 days ago I watched a TED talk about happiness and at the end the guy suggested doing the following for 21 days:

– Exercise.
– Meditate.
– Write down three new things that made me happy. It’s important to try to find different things every day, because it keeps you on the lookout for what made you happy, thereby making you more aware of happy moments, however fleeting.
– Do one random act of kindness.

I thought exercising every day was going to be the hardest, but the random act of kindness was harder. I don’t know how truly random I was about it. I counted helping people who emailed me about me their murdered relatives (I wrote a book about cold cases so I regularly hear from people asking for help). I used that one a lot. And if you don’t already know how to meditate that would be a challenge, but I’ve already learned something called MBSR.

Some days it was difficult to come up with three new things that made me happy. But in the end I could always recall some brief moment, like the night I killed a mosquito. It had been dive bombing me for hours, and I was accumulating welt after welt, when finally, at 2 in the morning, I got him. I felt this wonderful moment of bliss laying back down to sleep knowing that stupid mosquito wasn’t going to torment me anymore. (I also felt bad at having to kill it, but it was self-defense.)

Bottom line: did it work? Yes. Part of me thinks just making the effort of doing all these things every day in and of itself is a mood-enhancer, but prior to doing this every day I felt a little bad. It’s hard to describe. I’m facing a bunch of challenges, (growing older, finding a day-job, etc.) and it’s not depression, but I was beginning to feel, well, just bad about it. I started every day with an ache. The ache is gone now. I’m still in the same rough patch in life, but I just feel a lot better.

So if you’re in a rough patch and doing everything you can but things aren’t working out, because life is like that sometimes, do the above. I’m going to keep doing it.

I was concentrating on lining up my shot and didn’t even notice this guy look at me with this very annoyed expression! I’m sorry movie-set guy.

The kitten is totally fine, absolutely not rabid, and already tame according to Chris. You can barely see the little thing, but here he or she is. Oh God, she (I’m going with she because Chris is) is so teeny and cute. Look at the little munchkin owning that chair.

I’m jealous. I want a kitten. Or a puppy. And that garden.

I agreed to give a talk about the Duke Parapsychology Lab today at the Learning Annex. I knew it was an online class, and I knew it was going to be filmed, but somehow I missed the fact that it was going to be LIVE. I thought we were going to tape it in a studio, meaning we could re-do anything obviously bad, but no. They’re streaming it live.

It costs 99 cents, but if you click here [the link is gone now] at 3:40pm today, you can watch me stumble, lose words, my place, and whatever sense of self-esteem I have left! Oh god. It won’t be that bad, right? Oh god. I will try not to have a full-blown anxiety attack on camera, although I appreciate that that could be very entertaining … IF YOU’RE A SADIST.

Cops outside the library, protecting the patrons in the days following bin Laden’s death.

I got presents!! Yes, I made out quite well at yesterday’s graduation/birthday/father’s day party at Karen and Pete’s (my sister-in-law and brother)! I’d be modeling two of them today, but I have to work on a class I’m giving ON CAMERA tomorrow.

I should talk about that briefly. The Learning Annex is now offering classes via video streaming and they asked me to do one about the Duke Parapsychology Lab. I’m terrified. I don’t completely suck at giving presentations and lectures, but I have a very strict time limit, and I’m not sure how this is going to work. I’m used to looking down periodically to check my notes to make sure where I am, etc. If I’m talking into a camera, how will that work??

Anyway, I got these really cute shirts, which made me particularly happy because I had decided to give myself a new top for my birthday, but I didn’t find any I liked and now I have two. AND, my brother Douglas and his wife Robin gave me a VERY generous donation help to pay for all this dental work I have to do, my father and step-mother gave me all this spa-stuff, which I love, AND I got plenty of food to-go, so as you might imagine I’m in a very good mood today.

Buddy inspects the new tops. You can see how cute they are.

I didn’t get to a movie! My pedicure has to be re-done! (Oh the humanity!) I’m making next Tuesday my birthday, take two.

Today I’m heading out to Long Island for a combination graduation/birthday/father’s day party. Good food will be involved. I’m bringing empty to-go containers. (Wishful left-overing.) The other good thing about going out to Long Island is all that uninterrupted reading time on the train.

I bought a pair of board shorts to swim in and joined the City gym near me which has two pools. The outdoor pool, with the man-eating fish (pictured left) isn’t open yet, but I’ll probably never use that one. I prefer the indoor pool. The last time I joined this gym I left in a huff over “family hours.” I’m not allowed to use the gym during “family hours” which at the time were all the time, it was so unfair. But I must not have been the only one to complain, because it’s more even now.