Happiness Is A Warm Goat

Placer is not feeling the paparazzi

It occurred to me yesterday when I was wheeling a 60 lb. cheese-filled cooler I'd nicknamed Alan up a steep hill in negative 40 degree weather that my life is a little bit fucking ridiculous. 


Hysteria is setting in big-time here at the old farm. Yesterday I dissolved into the sort of maniacal laughing fit that I haven't experienced in months when I confronted the reality that winter up here is LIT'RULLY only half over. I work seven days a week, have basically no social life and engage in painstakingly specific repetitive tasks that require me to brave lethal temperatures and terrifying driving conditions on a near-daily basis. 

And yet .... 

On Saturday I was down in the cheesemines (trademark) methodically washing the cheese guys and listening to -- you guessed it -- a podcast. Such is my life. It was one of those TED Talks that I love to hate and hate to love, and this one was focusing on happiness. Or rather Happiness. It mentioned an app developed by some scientist type called Track Your Happiness that, as the name suggests, sort of gauges your overall happiness by subjecting you to thrice daily brief survey questions, many of which recur. In addition to asking the most basic things, like, "how happy are you right now?" it poses q's like what are you doing, how focused are you on what you're doing, do you want to be doing what you're doing, do you have to be doing what you're doing, if you were able would you skip ahead five minutes in time would you, how much did you sleep, are you interacting with anyone, etc. I'm not sure what the end goal of this little experiment is aside from collecting data, as it hasn't necessarily given me any epiphanies thus far, but it has forced me to evaluate how I'm feeling at regular intervals throughout the day, and the vast majority of the time, I am, to my astonishment, pretty fucking happy. This would not have been the case six months ago, I can tell you for sure.

Yesterday I was attempting to dispense LIFE advice to my girlfriend DR on the phone. Homegirl is going through a breakup, aided and abetted by the nonsense holiday that is Valentine's Day and its attendant minefield of likely disappointments. In speaking with her, I invoked this Happiness app and talked about how being single and not drinking as much have actually colluded to make me overall a much more clear-eyed, happy individual. It was then that I realized that I haven't been in a significant relationship or in love in two years. SHOULD I BE WORRIED?

Nah.

Spinsters, as the cognoscenti know, are the new black. 

Point being, I hesitate to say that my happiness is entirely due to the dearth of ordinary socio-sexual catalysts that produce anxiety and doubt and melancholy, but that's got to be partly true. The quiet and isolation has given me perspective and focus, and the fact that I've been able to do what I've dreamt of doing for so long in a pristinely beautiful place alongside one of my very favorite people has made me giddy and grateful. Every other day I wonder if this is really the life I'm cut out for or merely a detour on the way to something else, and every time I try to imagine life back in New York I get a painful little twinge in my gut at the thought of being away from these stupidly amazing creatures that make me excited to go to work every day. I miss my friends, I miss the subway, I miss walking around the city with my headphones and bopping along like I'm in a music video, I miss truly excellent coffee and different colored skin and the hustle and thrum, I ache for New York like it's a phantom limb recently amputated. But I don't know if I can ever go back, unless I'm carrying a herd of 40 Alpine goats in my suitcase. 

Which, if I keep up my hauling practice with Alan, could very well happen.