Answer #193 - Get Happy in 5 Easy Steps


So how do you shift your perspective from the introspective?

Here are 5 easy steps to banishing your innate existential angst while contemplating the new HAPPIER album you're planning to write.

   1) Acknowledge that change is the new static. 

      Roll with it. Realize that you have the choice whether to  a) completely lose your mind and write a personal anti-change manifesto on the side of your neighbor's barn, in the blood of a recently deceased goat who died of natural causes, and send it, piece by piece, to Mark Zuckerberg's office over the course of a year, or b) just post your stupid status update in whatever new form Mark Zuckerberg wants you to. Then you can acknowledge that, eventually, the entire net will be thought-driven, and not screen-driven. And ha! You'll laugh! Oh yeah.

2) Buy a new Hello Kitty iphone cover. 

     Then, when you find yourself suddenly asking Siri all those John Malkovichian questions, and getting increasingly angst-ridden at the soothing condescension of the programmed voice, pretend it's Hello Kitty answering you. This will make you laugh. And others will laugh.


3) Give away all your Solzhenitsyn paperbacks.     Just stop it. The Gulag's probably closed by now anyway. Time to pick up 50 Shades of Gray and get on with it. Laugh erotically and stop wringing your hands.

4) Learn to like Microbrew beer. The people that drink microbrew beer look alot happier than you and your over-sized goblet of red wine (in order to aerate it, yes. It needs air). They are telling jokes and laughing and sweating from bike rides. Laugh, and while you're at it, buy a mountain bike.

5) Find a pink tutu and wear it everywhere.       Not like Sarah Jessica Parker on the Sex and the City opening sequence, but like this guy.* Tell everyone you could have danced with the Bolshoi but didn't want to shave your back to cater to someone else's esthetic sensibility. They'll laugh, and then you'll laugh. And then, as God is my witness, you'll write that happy album!




*Who, for the record, takes photos of himself all over the world in a pink tutu, to increase cancer awareness on behalf of his wife. That actually makes me really happy...