This moment was Saturday evening, roughly 5pm Pacific Time.
I posted most of this on Facebook in that moment.
Many moments are between then and now, and life on the regular has replaced a solo choose your own adventure in La La Land, but happiness is hanging in there. It’s a bit meta, but that in and of itself is making me happier still.
As an exercise in sustainability, I’m revisiting here what spurred me on to share my freaking happiness with Facebook friends in real time at the weekend. And I’m adding to the list because sources of my happiness aren’t exclusive to Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles.
Here’s why I was and still am to be honest so freaking happy:
- I’ve had a couple of long, funny, insightful phone conversations with my wife today, after exchanging heartfelt, goofy, and endearing texts with her yesterday and last night. That all felt so god damn great.
- A couple of hours ago I saw my favorite sport played in a brand new stadium in the sunshine of Los Angeles.
- I’m about to eat a protein style double double for the 3rd time in 48 hours and I don’t feel even a tiny bit bad about it. That’s huge. I no longer am. And I’m not afraid of going back.
- I’ve been driving around parts of L.A. I’ve never seen before, in a beautiful glittery bronze Kia Sportage, with the windows down, blasting Talking Heads ‘Remain In Light’ ahead of a show at the Ace Hotel in which Angélique Kidjo will “reinterprete the album with African guitars, electrifying rhythms and layered backing vocals.” I’m so stoked to be in that place for that experience.
- Many people I know well and others I met for the first time this week at Mom 2.0 told me they voted for me (for the Best Dad Blog Iris Award), respect me, admire my creative work. And I accepted the compliments, gave hugs, and showed gratitude in return.
- I stayed up way too late, with someone who’s company I enjoy immensely, laughing, telling inappropriate jokes, being ridiculous, and basically being the kind of sibling neither of us had or have.
- My hair looked amazing last night. Yeah that’s shallow, I don’t care. Also shallow, it took 11 photos to get one I liked for this post. I’m cool with that.
- My wife texted me a two sentence demonstration of mindfulness. And I recognized it as such and replied in kind (albeit on a delay because I’m a bit daft).
- The Angélique Kidjo concert I attended after I posted on Facebook was a beautiful expression of humanity, shared experience, and offered a dance through a temporary portal into a better, kinder world. And that venue is bonkers cool.
- Before the concert, after the soccer match, I swapped cargo shorts and performance t-shirt and slip-on walkers for jeans, v-neck, blazer and boots, then walked around downtown with confidence in my gait, back straightened, and a smile. I texted my teen photos of one of the best used bookstores in the world (according to the awesome Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores book she loves) and a handful of YA novels I spied that I think she’d like to read. I traded Facebook messages with a friend. I bought a good root beer and enjoyed every damn drop of it. I was so freaking happy.
- While out that night I took a couple of absurdly staged selfies and didn’t give a shit about what passerbys might have thought, not even the guy at the bathroom sink next to me that I cropped out of the photo below. I made one sweet photograph of street art that I love and posted it on Instagram.
- I played The Game of Life with my daughters after school on Tuesday night. I won, with 3.69 million dollars, but I could’ve ended up homeless and childless, and that hour with them at the dining room table still would have been one of the happiest 60 minutes of my 2018 thus far.
- As I’m drafting the end of this post, I just put Gordi’s Clever Disguise on the turntable for the first time since it arrived while we were away a few weeks ago. It’s still on the A side but at the end of B is the piano version of “Can We Work It Out” and it’s the most beautiful, painful, aching piece of music I’ve fallen in love with in ages. After streaming the YouTube version below about a hundred times over the past few months, I am downright giddy to hear the song on vinyl for the first time.
- I believe there are more better days ahead than behind. I believe we can work it all out.
More moments, not all of which will be well-lit, will put additional distance between myself and the specific reasons I had for being so freaking happy but with friends, family, music, soccer, mindfulness, and a love of self I think, I hope, I will be able to keep it all fairly close at hand.
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