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

her white hat that Jamie bought. Clutching her favorite toothbrush ofcourse. But everything changes, everything passes.” (Sometimes I do cheat and write more than one sentence.)
    When I introduced the idea of the one-sentence journal on my blog, I was surprised by the enthusiastic response. Clearly, a lot of people suffer from the same thwarted journal-keeping impulse that I do; like me, they find the prospect of “keeping a journal” enticing but intimidating. The idea of keeping a limited journal, to enjoy the satisfaction of keeping a record of experiences or thoughts but without the guilt or burden of writing at length, struck a chord.
    Several people shared their own versions of a one-sentence journal. One reader kept a journal that he planned to give to his three children; he travels a lot for work, so he keeps a small notebook in his briefcase, and every time he gets on a plane—and only while passengers are boarding—he fills a few pages about the latest goings-on in their family. I think this is a particularly brilliant solution because it transforms wasted time (boarding time) into an enjoyable, creative, and productive period. Another reader wrote to say that, after seeing an interview with the writer Elizabeth Gilbert on Oprah, she’d been inspired to imitate Gilbert’s practice of keeping a happiness journal in which she writes down the happiest moment of every day. Another reader, an entrepreneur, keeps a work journal, in which he notes any important work-related events, problems, or discoveries. He reported that it was an invaluable resource, because whenever he wants to remember how he handled a particular situation, his journal prompts his memory of how he handled it and what he learned: “I work alone, and if I didn’t have a work journal, I’d probably keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over. Also it gives me a feeling of progress by reminding me how far I’ve come since I started my company.”
    Along with keeping the one-sentence journal, the catastrophe memoirs spurred me to take another, less pleasant kind of action. I realized that Jamie and I needed to get our affairs in order. All the memoirs emphasized how horrible it was to deal with cold logistics at a time of shock and grief.
    “You know,” I said to Jamie, “we really need to update our wills.”
    “Okay, let’s do it,” he answered.
    “We’ve been saying that we should for years, and we really need to.”
    “Okay.”
    “We’re never going to feel like doing it, so we just have to decide to do it.”
    “Yes, you’re right!” he said. “I’m agreeing with you. Let’s get something on the calendar.”
    And we did. Zoikes, there’s nothing like seeing the words LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT in lawyerly, old-fashioned typewriter-style Courier font to act as a memento mori. And although it sounds supremely unromantic, rarely have I felt such love for Jamie as I did in that lawyer’s office. I was so grateful for the fact that he was alive and strong and that the wills seemed like play documents that would never matter.
    With our wedding anniversary approaching on September 4, it occurred to me that a (slightly grim) way to mark the occasion would be to use our anniversary as an annual prompt to review our situation. Were our wills up-to-date? Did Jamie and I both have access to the financial information that the other person routinely handled? I knew offhand that Jamie had no idea where I kept our tax or insurance information or the girls’ birth certificates. I should probably mention that to him. Repeating this “Be Prepared Day” review annually on our anniversary would keep it from seeming morbid—instead, it would be an ordinary expression of family responsibility.
    Along the same lines, one night, as I lay reading in bed after Jamie had fallen asleep, I finished Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, about the first year after her husband’s death. As I closed the book, I was overwhelmed with thankfulness at the fact that Jamie, snoozing gently beside me, was safe for now. Why did I get so irritated when he waited for me to change Eleanor’s diaper? Why did I keep complaining about his failure to return my e-mails? Let it go!
    I felt a bit guilty about my reaction to these memoirs of catastrophe. Was it wrong to feel reassured by reading about these sorrowful events? Viewed one way, there was a ghoulish quality to this downward comparison—aschadenfreude-ish exploitation, however