If you're happy and you know it

At the beginning of January while most people are making fervent fitness resolutions (which range from joining a gym to idly watching a fitness DVD of someone who used to be on Coronation Street) I find myself in a transient state. Unable to change for the better until I've turned one year older. For I never officially make a new start until after my birthday, which conveniently for me falls during the last week of the month. This is because undoubtedly any promises I make to myself will come undone during the celebrations and will probably do so all at once. Now that the birthday fire has burned out and nothing but a handful of pitiful embers remain, I am free to embark on 2014 with a fresh perspective. And I'd like to feel better about myself in the coming year, wouldn't we all?

So in order to start 2014 as I mean to go on i.e. making everyone feel better about themselves, I have decided to warn you about an ominous website. A website which will slowly drain your soul of light and radiance and replace it with an empty tin of Heinz tomato soup. (If you look up Heinz tomato soup in the dictionary you won't find a definition, but fortunately I am on hand to tell you that it is soulless).

"Can you be happy for 100 days in a row?"

Such happiness, so Stepford

I encountered the sinister website 100HappyDays, as one often does these days through a Twitter hashtag, having originally clicked because I thought what a funny satirical joke it was. However a few minutes of incredulous scrowling* later, I discovered that it is in fact an initiative instructing people to upload a daily photograph conveying what they consider to be personal happiness.

So very obviously not a joke.

In the words of the wonderfully clinical and pragmatic Mycroft Holmes, "This is a matter of national importance. Grow up!" Out of all the wide ranging and character arcing emotions which we experience as fickle human beings throughout our daily lives, happiness is the most boring.Yes it is immensely satisfying to be content, but it's completely unnecessary to explain to other people why you are happy because you will inevitably be accused of gloating and you probably are. Besides isn't posting a positive spin on our lives through a social media platform what we do all-day every-day anyway? Happiness overload!

But lets seriously consider this for a moment. Does spending several agonised minutes uploading a photo of "the very tasty cake in the nearby coffee place" to Instagram (once you've ensured the appropriate filter portrays it in the best light and the hashtags are sufficiently optimised) equate to true happiness? Now, taking a screen shot of the reverence your photograph receives from your followers is surely a more accurate reflection of what makes you happy. A nice itemised list of happiness. Because that's what it's really all about:: validation. We're just not happy until other people know about it. Plus, not everyone experiences happiness in a robotic Stepford Wife fashion as 100HappyDays would have you believe. Personal joy isn't always clean-cut good family fun. Who decides what the criteria is for personal joy and fulfillment?

But then again who cares? Frankly the assumption that anyone will find the banality of what you consider to be happiness at all interesting is insulting. I understand that in your dream scenario you envision your legions of fictitious life-spectators to engage with you encouragingly and in turn be happy for you. Unfortunately no one experiences happiness when other people are happy. In the real world people roll their eyes and glower at the screen while a tidal wave of self-loathing fills the room and bursts through the window into the street, taking everyone and everything with them into a swirling abyss of hateful despair.

But I digress, I just don't like initiatives. They're usually the precursor to a sect which results in its members committing mass suicide and the website is worded frighteningly so. "People successfully completing the challenge claimed to start receiving more compliments from other people and fall in love during the challenge." By taking photos of cakes which you haven't eaten or paid for? I don't think so. Actually people receive compliments and fall in love simply by embracing all of their emotions and living their lives.

Otherwise known as "real life"
@RobHughesComedy

The longer you spend reading 100HappyDays the less you will notice the residual numbness which will inevitably engulf you. The childish nonchalance of the font subdues you and the blinding yellow hue is probably supposed to be reminiscent of butter or gold or sunlight and other inherently nice things which we associate with the colour. It's best to scan it quickly and immediately click the x button, lest you should yield to sharing the forced experience of an everyday commonplace emotion with people you don't particularly like or even know.

In order to feel good about your life you need to remember that you're perfectly able to be happy without this website or anyone else knowing about it. But only if you allow yourself to be. After all, happiness depends upon ourselves.

*Scrowling, verb "To scroll through a web page while scowling."

Picture source: https://mubi.com/films/the-stepford-wives

Cardiff Read - 'For polyamory not cashdollahmoney'

The most recent Cardiff Blogs meet up was themed around local projects which people commit themselves to purely out of the love and enjoyment which they get out of it and not for the money. (In hindsight, it would have been the icing on the cake to have Jessie J perform).  However I am skeptical about that idea, because even though the projects aren't benefiting fiscally, the endeavour isn't purely altruistic. Mainly because the person in question is receiving a lot of free self-promotion from it, which is just as crucial as the monetary rewards to a brands success. I don't make any money from my personal blog, but I hold my hands up and confess that I don't do it purely for love. I do love blogging yes, but I want people to read what I write and validate it. This is not love. This is an aspiration where I am the only beneficiary. It's selfish. And there's nothing wrong with being selfish in your ambitions. I would just rather not hide behind the veneer of Sainthood. 

But one local project, which I think comes the closest to the concept of  collective benefiting is Cardiff Read, an informal book club who meet once a month in Canton. Jessica Best @JessicaBest87 started the group in March 2010 in order to meet fellow book worms in a relaxed atmosphere, which wasn't as regimented as other clubs she had experienced previously. At the first meeting she met Steve Dimmick @TheDimmick (who has since co-organised the club with her) and in just over a year they've successfully coordinated a consistent and vibrant meet-up of people who enjoy literature and a good chat over a glass (or two) of red. 

What I like most about Cardiff Read is that it's not essential to have read the entire book, or even a page. It can be just as invigorating to sit and listen to the discussion while meeting new people and then going away with a renewed motivation to read that month's book choice with an enriched foundation of eclectic opinions. Another important aspect of the club which makes it stand out, is the online interaction in the downtime between meetings. The discussion continues via the Twitter feed @CardiffRead where people can make observations while they're reading, contextualise with links to the authors/reviews and most recently people have been arranging to borrow copies of that months book if others were struggling to obtain theirs. 

They've also started asking the people who have chosen that months title to write a brief couple of paragraphs pertaining to why they picked it and then having another member review it with their (often conflicting) opinion. This is then featured on their Facebook page. Yours truly took the reins for September's choice with Galt Niederhoffer's The Romantics. (Which if you continue to scroll you will find at the bottom of this post). In true Cardiff Read form, Caitlin Allen @CaitlinLA89 felt compelled to detail her response to the novel on her (very eloquently written) blog soon after: Your friends already know you're awful. Which only gives more credence to the online ripples Cardiff Read has been so successful in creating and maintaining. 

If you want to find out more about the club, Jessica was recently interviewed for a guest post on the @CdfBlogs community blog Cardiff Blogs - Guest Post Cardiff Read. Or you can read on for my flagrant disregard for pretentious literary opinions.

Choosing 'The Romantics'

(For more discussion on this topic request Cardiff Read as a friend and read it here)

"When Cardiff Read asked me to pen the reasoning behind my choice for last month’s book club, naturally I began to concoct a fictitious list of pretentious opinions which drew me to Galt Niederhoffer’s acerbic novel. (However as it turns out, fabricating literary insights is exhausting). So instead the simple and honest reason is that I caught the trailer for the film adaptation online and after discovering that it wasn’t yet released in the UK, I bought the book to bide my time. While I concede that a group of college friends reuniting at a wedding is hardly original, I was reeled in by the emotional torment of unrequited love. As a dating blogger it’s a concept which I examine frequently and I was particularly interested in the idea that friendship and rivalry often go hand in hand.

While reading the ‘The Romantics’, I found the authors insights into the group’s perceptions of each other to be both brutal and refreshing. It certainly isn’t a comfort to think that your friends harbour such candid opinions of you, but I’m of the belief that being honest about flaws is cathartic and it’s certainly essential in a friendship if you are to achieve unconditional love.  In fact my fickle response to the characters almost mirrored the real friendships I have, in that I was in a perpetual state of falling in and of love with them.

After reading the book I found myself giving the most credence to Lila’s character, particularly her view on unrequited love. “It’s the perfect romantic construct. It allows two cowardly people to act out a fantasy of love without having to face any real consequences.”  It truly is the measure of a good book for me when I’m confronted with a different perspective on a topic and I intend on exploring cowardliness in love for a future blog post. So to conclude, I was captivated by the prose, and style of Niederhoffer’s cynical satire, which some people will probably call an easy read. But as @Lizmrawlins would say, "the book doesn’t have to be War and Peace". 

The pursuit of reading is merely an escapist exercise after all."

So if you're looking for fellow literary fiends and a good old-fashioned chinwag then don't be shy - because we're not! Follow @CardiffRead and check out this months read http://flavours.me/CardiffRead