I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness recently. Perhaps this is because I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, the memoir of the year this Yale Law School graduate spent test-driving conventional wisdom of “how to be happy.” It sounds very hokey. It’s not. She’s very to-do list orientated, very sensible, very lawyerly. You have to do your own happiness, she says, and ultimately: you aren’t happy unless you think you’re happy. Why of course—it’s so simple!

I picked the book up one rainy Wednesday (last rainy Wednesday, at it were) and read it in two days (cover-to-cover in two days is excessive even for me). I read it, and then I went online to read her blog about the book. Lo and behold, where should Ms. Rubin be scheduled on her book tour but my very own Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California—and this Monday, nary four days after I finished the book.

It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten a ping from the universe—a worlds colliding, things aren’t as random as they seem to be—sort of ping. So, pinging away, I went to Vroman’s last night and got my book signed. She was lovely and well-spoken, but it was a bit of a perfunctory event, in any case. We don’t read so we can listen to people talking about their books; we read for the silence, the solitude (the transformation?) of being alone with words.

You know I liked the book because one of the biggest things she struggled with was chocolate chip cookies. Specifically, the giant ones sold in delis in New York City. You’d think giant chocolate chip cookies would cause happiness—indeed, they sometimes do—but there are all sorts of unhappiness producing things that come from eating a giant cookie every day (guilt, inability to button pants, diabetes) and an odd, happy sort of satisfaction in resisting the indulgence.

She tried to push herself out of her comfort zone even though the act itself wasn’t pleasant; she saw that being challenged is an important part of happiness. But, she says—and I love this—“The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way, at the same time, every day, and savoring it, is worth noting.”

That is my ode to breakfast, to the first sip of hot coffee, sliding hot into my empty belly where it jostles around, hot and settling into warmth. Every day the same: I wake up starving, ready for a bountiful meal, fresh and sweet, every day undiminished in deliciousness. It is also my ode to writing. It feels the same, mostly, the sitting down to write. The same computer, my buddy, the same hands that pound at keys. The moment of nervousness while the computer whirs, opening a saved document (or worse, a blank document). I keep thinking I should find new places to write—again and again, I go to the Pasadena Public Library, always the same. But I love the library, my library: roving for parking spots when it opens at 9, heaving a heavy bag on a shoulder, and making my way to the same table with the same wobbly light.

So, I savored my entry and exit of the library today, brimming with ideas of happiness. Be generous, cut people slack, act the way you want to feel—smile more! laugh more!—be Megan, follow your passions, be mindful—mindfulness, oye vey (the one I struggle the most with). Etcetera.I was thinking about generosity and mindfulness when I arrived to the library this morning, parked my car, and enjoyed the pleasure of my routine. When I left five hours later, I found this post-it note firmly and deliberately—with care, one might say—stuck under my windshield wipers:

I’ll admit it: it was not my best parking job. I was on the line (on, not over). A suburban could not have fit next to me–but a sedan easily could have. So, some SUV-driving angry person (forgive the prejudice/stereotype) actually drove by my less-than-stellar parking job (I reiterate: on the line, not over) and was so offended, they took the time to tell me what a selfish bastard I was. They took the time to stop their car, find a post-it note and a felt-tipped pin (this was not the job of a ballpoint), and paste it to my windshield. Did you feel better, SUV-person, after having slapped the post-it to my car? Didja?! (On a sidenote, not entirely unrelated: I drive a minivan. Not by choice. Regardless: still a minivan. Who puts angry notes on minivans–a car with a driving demographic primarily consisting of middle-aged mothers.)

So, um, where was I… speaking of happiness. There sure are a lot of unhappy people out there. The note only strengthened my resolve to be generous, to cut people slack. Why be pissed? Why chose anger? It doesn’t do you any good, and it sure didn’t move my car back an inch. So–why not move along, get over it, let it go, lighten up (to quote a few of Ms. Rubin’s resolutions)–and just find a new spot?

I thought to myself, today, Thursday, as I was driving to the library in the rain: “Wow. I really never appreciated good weather until I got bad weather.” Six days of rain will get you thinking such profound thoughts. Yes, I am a spoiled Southern California native and once-Colorado-dweller–a state that has winter and also more annual days of sunshine than Hawaii (300 of ‘em). But, I maintain, constant sunshine is like health. You don’t think about it while it’s good.

Also, I thought: I never did put on those new windshield wipers. Said winshield wipers have been sitting in the backseat of my car since sweltering August, when the idea of rain was laughable. Since August, when the hills behind Los Angeles–behind my house–burned. We are now living the aftermath of that burn. 250 homes have been evacuated as the inevitability of mudslides looms. The land threatens to slip out from under us.

The rain, then, feels just the same as that week of fires, when the heat was oppressive, the smokey air pervasive, and we waited, tense, for news: any homes lost? Worse, any lives? Not yet, but it looms, over our shoulders (or rather, under our feet, slippery and slimy), and we go to bed and wake up to find that it’s still raining.

Maybe that’s why weather is the evergreen topic of conversation: because it so pervades our lives.

This is the third time it’s happened, and it pisses me off. There are eight empty six-person tables at the Pasadena Public Library, and he sits directly across from me. Unarticulated library protocol is that if you must share a table, you fill the empty lane, so to speak—sit on the opposite end chair as the other person. Never the middle, and never, never do you sit directly across from someone—leaning forward so that the book you’re reading brushes her computer, your long nails picking through pages without reading them while she shifts uncomfortably and tries to continue working, your greasy hair falling into your eyes as you steal glances at her.

The first time, I had turned up my music, changed the angle of my computer, and powered through it. The second I had waited an appropriate half an hour before I got coffee and changed tables. This time, the culprit—a young man wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and leather pants—sat down across from me, squeaking and shifting in his stiff animal skin attire, squish squish creak squish, creak creak. Seriously?

So, I packed up my papers and water bottles, threw away my empty coffee cup, and relocated myself to a table across the room. It was incredibly rude of me. Seriously, though, today is not a day I felt like pushing through, like blocking him out, when I’m already dealing with enough blocks to writing. What is the threshold of behavior that makes it okay to be inexcusably rude? I don’t think I allow myself to be rude enough when I’m uncomfortable. Although, perhaps rude–negative connotations abounding–is not the correct word here.

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Perhaps my patience is not what it should be, and perhaps the fourth day of rain is wearing on me. (And so I wonder how on earth I’m suggesting relocating to another climate—a Midwestern or Minnesotan climate—when four days of rain makes me moody and mopey.) Perhaps it is also because I took a day trip to northern California yesterday to meet with a very nice editor and the whole thing just wearied me… physically and directionally. After a day splashing around Berkeley blocks and public transportation in the constant rain and occasional downpour—thank you Mom for letting me borrow your oh-so fashionable Wellington rainboots—well, I’m pooped. As it turns out, the idea of flying to Berkeley for the day—how very business traveler of me, how very adult—is very different than the execution. The idea: up early with the corporate folk, drinking coffee in the airport together, dressed in our business best; then an organic lunch with the hippie college students; then a stroll down to the bay and an informational interview with an acquisitions editor—sign me up, Southwest: you airline you, with your ridiculously low fares and delicious honey roasted peanuts!

Well, all of these things happened, just soggier, colder, and more suggestive that, after all, it may not, be feasible to make a living as a travel writer. Not yet, at least. And not ever, I wonder. Or at least not if I want to actually travel. What with “the internet” and the ease with which it connects people to the people they’re looking for, I learned that many companies prefer to hire “travel” writers who live in the destination they want to publish a book on.

I need to focus my area of expertise. (Hell, I need to find an area of expertise). I need to be more strategic in how I market myself and what I chose to write. For, after all, to paraphrase a quote I just stumbled across: I can do [write] anything–I just can’t do [write] everything. I need to be the only person that could write a specific article, guidebook, memoir. Whatever. And, I should build an online presence for myself. Write a blog that’s a resource for blank.

So—I spent the day mournfully looking at the rain and pondering ideas to fill in the blank. And, it is perhaps unnecessary and redundant to say—I’m feeling overwhelmed. 

I would rather be ashes than dust!

I would rather that my spark should burnout in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

–Jack London

Jack London died when he was 40, so perhaps it is not an apt quote for someone who wants to live a prolonged life among multiple generations. Still, the sentiment is a bold one, and, to quote another favorite, William Zisner, author of On Writing: “Words are the only tools you’ve got. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.”

I’ve spent a wonderful two weeks on vacation, with family and food and friends (the triple threat position). A break after the stress of turning in applications, a stress which has turned into…a waiting. A passive waiting, I can do no more… which is stressful in a very different kind of way.

I’m a very visual learner/thinker, so I now have to refocus my calendar, click, and now I’m at the top rather than the bottom of a year. December was on the right end of my brain, and now I swing back around to January, on the left, at the beginning. Just like you swing across a line of type; reading left to right.

And so, on January 1–what a difference a year makes. Last year, at this very time, I had so much to write about–too much. Things I had done that I was just burning to write about, but I didn’t have time to write about any of them because I was too busy doing them, too busy being in places to write about them. I was being bold, was flying. And now, I’m stationary, and it’s sort of hard to have all these things that I did but not that I am doing. But, I must visualize this as a pause in my calendar, a plateau between dense, energetic scribbles, a time to record the scribbles and be with the triple threat.

Naturally, I am actually doing things, and really enjoying this life here where I grew up. Today, for example, I went to the Rose Parade for the first time in my conscious memory (my parents tell me I went as a youngster, but, as any college student knows–if you don’t remember it, it doesn’t count). I realize as a Pasadena native this is scandalous, my lack of Rose Parade attendance, but my oh my–did I have fun this year! I don’t know if you’ve heard… but the Rose Parade is sweet.

A doggy snowboards down a slope on a float made entirely of flowers.

Only in California.