My Accidental Maxim

I was journaling the other day and meant to write “I am the happiest I’ve been in my life.” But I caught myself writing “I am the happiness.” As I hastened to cross it out, I stopped and realized, no, that’s actually what I mean, isn’t it?

It explains, at least a little bit, why haven’t been contributing to my blog since September. I’ve been so busy being “the happiness” that I didn’t have time to write.

Or perhaps this is the cause. At the beginning of the school year, my principal gave each member of her faculty The Journal of Awesome. It was created buy a guy named Neil Pasricha. A few years back and Neil, like many of us, had hit some bumps in the road of life. Broken marriage, death of a close friend, ensuing depression… you know the drill.

So Neil decided to crawl his way out of the dark hole of despair by writing one awesome thing every day.

(Go ahead. Twist your skeptical mouth or roll your eyes at the hokiness. I certainly did. Just another take on Norman Vincent Peale’s old “power of positive thinking.”)

It was working so well for Neil that he started a website called “1,000 Awesome Things." (Enter superior eye roll here.) His blog turned into the bestsellers The Book of Awesome and then later The Book of (Even More) Awesome, translated into dozens of languages around the world.

I know my dear principal, whom I genuinely like and respect, intended the journal to be a much needed morale-booster. So I sighed to myself and committed to my pretty turquoise colored awesome journal.

As I focused on finding my awesome each day, it got easier. It became this daily, if old school pen-and-paper way to reflect on my Sunny Side of Life. I’d been writing all year on the positive side of aging and being single, but now I was noticing the abundance of awesome things in this world, extraordinary in their simplicity.

My blog went by the wayside as the observations went into The Journal of Awesome. As 2013 winds down, I’d like to list, for the sake of closure, just a few of my awesomes captured over the last four months.

• The crossing guard saying, "Hey girl!" and flashing me the peace sign every time I ride my motorcycle to work
• The taste of a Peppermint Patty I didn't have to pay for
• When I come back from lunch and my students have hidden under my desk to jump out to surprise me
• The way the coffee smells at Drip on Mind Gravy poetry nights
• Being texted by a man I like "ur the one with bright eyes"
• The way frost sparkles on the brown grass when the sun hits it on a 24-degree morning
• Waking up on Saturday thinking it's Sunday but it's really truly Saturday!
• Patient acceptance of things being the way they are
• When a 3rd grader, on a particularly humid morning, says to me, "Miz McQueen, why you hair look like a hot mess?"

And last, but certainly not least, my accidental maxim. I am the happiness.