The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Blue Bird we were looking for! We’ve been miles and miles and miles, and he was here all the time!” This unsubtle moral, of course, was quite fitting for my happiness project.
    For no other reason except to keep my resolution to “Go off the path,” one afternoon I stepped into an oddly comprehensive hardware store that’s tucked into my neighborhood. It’s small yet carries everything from lightbulbs to wooden puzzles to vacuum cleaners to fancy candles. I found myself staring up at an array of realistically carved, battery-operated “Breezy Singers” birds, which are outfitted with motion sensors so they move and twitter when anyone walks by. I wouldn’t have considered buying one of the birds, except that I noticed that one of the birds was a bluebird. I stood transfixed. I could buy it for my collection. And so I did.
    Another day, I went with a friend down to the Flower District. We wandered around looking at the fake and fresh flowers and the enticing cheap decorative gewgaws. I’m fascinated by bags of tiny plastic babies, fake zinnia heads, and butterflies made of gold sequins, and she’s exactly the same way.
    “Hey,” I asked, “do you think any of these places would sell anything bluebird-related?” Having a collection transformed an aimless walk into a quest.
    “Are you kidding?” she said. “There’s a store that sells fake birds on this very corner.” (How she knew this, I have no idea.) I bought a realistic bluebird for $2.71.
    A year ago I wouldn’t have allowed myself to make these purchases. I wouldn’t have cluttered my office with bluebirds. I would’ve felt too guilty about taking time away from work to do “nothing.” But my resolutions, like “Take time for projects” and “Go off the path,” had changed my attitude. I saw that there was value in taking time to play, and along the same lines, I’d come to see the merit of treasuring a little clutter. I’d beenrelentlessly purging everything superfluous from our apartment when a friend said to me, “Remember to leave a little mess.”
    “Really?” I asked, surprised. “Why?”
    “Every house needs a few junk drawers where you can find unexpected things. It’s good to have a bit of chaos someplace, with some things that don’t really belong anywhere but that you want to keep. You never know when stuff like that will come in handy, plus it’s just nice to know it’s there.”
    As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. Someplace I need an empty shelf, and someplace I need a junk drawer. Maybe my bluebirds do make for a bit of clutter—but that’s fine. I want my office to house some playful elements that don’t have to be useful.
    As I wired my bluebird to the standing lamp next to my desk, I was glad that I’d gone off the path. It was fun. What’s more, buoyed by this fun, I had the mental wherewithal to sit down and tackle something that I’d been postponing for a long time: figuring out how to post my own photographs onto my blog. So although I felt as though I’d been wasting time, in fact I’d been quite productive—just not in a typing-at-my-computer kind of way.
    The work on Eliza’s scrappy cap had given me an idea for another kind of collection. I started a “Happiness Box” in which I’d collect all sorts of little trinkets meant to trigger happy thoughts and memories.
    I had the perfect box—a box I loved but that had never really been suitable for any purpose. My college roommate had given it to me. It was old, with a lid decorated with two panels painted with roses and two panels of cloudy mirror. It bothered me to have it sitting around, unappreciated; now I had a special plan for it. I put in an ancient, tiny Snoopy memo pad that reminded me of my sister when she was little. I added a miniature china teacup from my grandmother’s teacup collection. I put in a figurine of Dorothy to remind me of home and Eliza’s early love of ruby red slippers. (“Those ruby slippers have always had the power to take you back to Kansas,” she’d croon as she’d reenact the climactic scene from The Wizard of Oz. “Just tap your heels together three times, Dorothy, and you’ll be home in two seconds.”) Iput in my last pair of Coke-bottle glasses, made before they had the technology to make the lenses thin—they’re hilarious, now that I don’t have to wear them. A small cloth Little Red Riding Hood doll reminded me of all the times I’d read the story of “Little Red Hoodie”