I love what my blog has come to be for me – a written memory of all of the horrible and emotional parts of life. It’s almost like therapy. You run to it during the dark parts of your life, pushing through the hard parts in words and music. You cry as you write, you spend hours waiting for the right thoughts to ripen before you trap them down in black and white, hitting “publish” to make them eternally permanent emotional fixtures in the hallways of your past.

But a funny thing happens to me when I’m happy. I don’t need the writing. Or maybe, I should need the writing, but I just don’t have time. Or energy. Or feel like being quite that serious. It seems silly to write about how wonderful your life is. No one wants to get on the Internet and read someone brag about their life.  Or at least that is what I tell myself.

Except for the part where I am wrong.

I need to write when I am happy. I need to crystallize the parts of life that are amazing. It may sound like bragging, but I think somehow it has to be good for one’s soul to walk up to a microphone and say, “Ah hem. Hello world. My life is fabulous. Thank you.”

The Legacy of Carry Bradshaw

My younger sister has just discovered the show Sex and the City. Watching her discover Carry, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha is the best thing that an older sister can experience. It’s better than Christmas. It might even be better than watching her go to Prom or get engaged. Seriously.

When I was exactly her age, Sex and the City would come on at 10:00pm on TBS. They would play two episodes, one at 10 and one at 10:30. Friends would come on at 11:00, and would play until midnight. Every single night at 10pm, I would yell out to my best friend and roommate Dana, “Dana! It’s starting!!”

And we would sit on the couch, sometimes with bowls of ice cream, watching the highs and lows and emotions and lessons of Carry’s show pour over the TV.  Dana would always try to leave after the first episode, and I would always convince her to stay up for the second one. And sometimes, if I was REALLY lucky, Dana would stay for Friends too.

Being 20 and a proper mess, there was something about Carry and her narration of the woes of a single woman looking for love and adulthood that seemed so….perfect. Fabulous. Grown up. Skinny. Smart. Deep. Wonderful.

I think I have actually seen every episode at least 5 times.

But flash forward 5 years later, and I actually  feel pretty good about my life. I’m not twenty and lost. I’m not even twenty-five and a mess. I’m twenty-seven, engaged, happy, and even beginning to feel comfortable saying that I might even be successful  (that feels like a big step). I’m by no means perfect, but I’m beginning to think I really like my own skin. I know my strengths. I even sometimes don’t care about my weaknesses. I know I’m loud, bossy, too controlling and just outright crazy sometimes. And I’m working on being better about seeing and hearing people. Not telling people how to fix their problems. Trying to remember to pay my rent, balance my check book, charge my phone, and find my keys.

But my sister – she’s in the thick of it. She’s in school, discovering herself and everything that goes along with it. She’s knee deep in love, and college, and therapy, and Carry Bradshaw.

Last night at my mom’s house she says to me, “I’m in Season Two, and I LOVE Steve for Miranda! He is such a nice guy! And I can’t believe Charlotte and Tray! I really hope they get their lives together!”

It’s like watching your first child discovering Christmas for the first time (ok, so I don’t have kids, and they’ve never had a Christmas, but I can say it if I want). I love seeing her in the thick of her life, drinking up Carry’s words of wisdom like they are water in the desert. It makes me happy.

On Happiness.

It makes me happy in my guts. In the part of you that is proud of someone you love, but subtly proud of yourself that you can even recognize where they are at, because you’ve been there, and you’re not anymore.

I’m not in 20 anymore. I’m not in “Who Am I??” anymore. I’m not in college. I’m not blindly feeling for the corporate ladder. I’m just me. Crazy, late, and sometimes lost. Often a grouch (just ask my fiance). And not nearly as nice as most of the people that I love spending time with. I can be a bitch. But on the upside, I am really good at getting shit done. And you know, there are times that doesn’t seem like a good thing, but then there are other moments when I am glad I’m me.

I need to write in happiness. It helps balance the picture. Maybe that’s just the plight of a creative artists…the happy times just aren’t as angsty – doesn’t make for nearly the same gut-wrenching-art.

I’ve spent over a year flitting around my great life like a little fairy or a forest nymph. Not caring that I wasn’t learning or growing. Not caring if I was late or on time. Working late, going to cocktail hours, and definitely NOT reading self help books. I found a great man, fell in love, and managed to trick him into thinking getting married to me was a good idea. I’ve listened to ALOT of Ingrid Michaelson, Nora Jones, Matt Wertz, Tyrone Wells, and Ernie Halter. Which I have to admit, is a nice break from The Fray – who I love with the depth of my whole heart.

This last year I got a dog, who I loved with my whole heart and wallet, and sadly she got cancer and died juts 11 months after getting her. She was like me – crazy, fierce, but the damn cutest thing you’ve ever seen. I walked her lot this year, nearly every morning walking to the Church on Orange street, just two miles from my house.

I ate a lot this year. I have a truly fabulous fiance who loves taking me out to eat. Or rather, he loves making me happy, and I love to eat. I’ve eaten more buffalo chicken pizzas, spicy sausage pastas, juicy bacon burgers, with microbrewery beers, or entire bottles of wine than I have had in my entire previous life combined.  It’s a miracle that I still fit into my pants.

But even though it is not deep and angsty, it is not always gut-wrenching and life changing, I think I like happiness. I think it’s good for the soul to write happy things. I think it’s good for the soul to read things that don’t necessarily change us, but we just like them. I think it’s good to not always be so serious. To stay late and drink too much. To write about things that don’t matter. To fall in love. To get puppies that you don’t have time for. To not take yourself too seriously. And to write.