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Welcome to Stacey 2.0



I spent the better part of the past 32 years living by this philosophy.  I have always felt there’s that little black cloud hanging over my head, no matter where I go.  I have some pretty bad luck – thankfully nothing particularly tragic or sad – but things would happen to me that don’t normally happen to other people.  I just don’t remember it being any other way.  And so, as long as I didn’t get my hopes up too high, I couldn’t get crushed.  Family, school, jobs, money; everything applied.

I became particularly sad after turning 30, because nothing on my life plan seemed to be getting accomplished.  That’s not entirely accurate, because I was far from rock bottom: I have a husband that I think loves me the majority of the time; I bought a house; my cats and dogs are healthy and provide a wealth of entertainment value.  But it wasn’t going how I wanted it to go, exactly according to my plan.  Even though I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, my financial decisions and career decisions seemed to be big mistakes.  In many cases I am still living with those consequences.  Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

And now, let’s just say I had some “stuff” happen in the past 18 months or so.  Things about my job and my personal life were giving me repeated emotional punches to the face.  And not all of it was directly on me – but it definitely affected me.  I knew I needed to change my outlook.  I was in tears on my way to work, in tears on my way home, or just finding myself down in the dumps and not knowing how to pick myself up.  I had spent so long being so unhappy, I just couldn’t afford to do it anymore.  But if my luck wasn’t going to change, how the heck was I supposed to be “happy” around all of this?

You might already know there is a HUGE assortment of self-help books on the subject of “thinking positive” and “finding happiness” and “think yourself happy all the time” nonsense.  And I feel like I can call it nonsense because I’ve read and/or listened to most of them on audiobook.  You just can’t tell a pessimist to “will” themselves happy.  It doesn’t compute – not when you have a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, that things just don’t work out for the best.

I had to figure I couldn’t be the only one in my situation.  But where does a true pessimist find solace in a world where ignorance is bliss?  Apparently at Urban Outfitters (or at least that’s where my epiphany occurred – it’s where I end up occasionally on my lunch hour at work).  There was a book there, among others, called Instant Happy by Karen Salmansohn.  Since I was looking to become instantly happy, I flipped it over to read the back cover.  "Seek out the happiness in all of life's crappiness."  Okay, I can get on board with that.  She's also a best-selling author of a book titled How to Be Happy, Dammit...  I am liking the sound of this.  And even still, I left without buying the book that particular day.  I did come back to my desk at work and Googled "Karen Salmansohn" and found out that her writing style is pretty cynical and that much of her writing for happiness is designed exactly for people like me.  Now, I don't want this to be an exclusively Karen Salmansohn fan girl blog, but I will tell you I did go back and buy Instant Happy and gave it to my mom as a gift.  She is making me read it now.   

To sum it all up, this blog is going to be all about my journey as the former eternal pessimist to the now moderately content.  And there will probably be some random things thrown in here about my hobbies, my family, or my pets because I am learning to appreciate those things more now too.  This is the new version of me, the Stacey 2.0.  Stay tuned, and thanks for watching. 

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