50 Things That Feel Really Good: #s 1-5

So. Sometimes I wallow. I admit it. I sat on the couch the other night in a spate of loneliness eating vanilla ice cream with Nutella, watching 'Anchorman' (of all the absurd movies) & wondering why Will Ferrell, in his hirsute ludicrousness, could get with Christina Applegate, when I can't even seem to stay with a partner for longer than 3 months without something going poorly. Why I only have *cough* dollars in my bank account. Why nothing felt right.




Then I fell asleep. Then I woke up. And somewhere in between watching my dog stretch luxuriously before coming over for petting, drinking that second cup of coffee, and watching the sun rise through the cedars, I remembered: There are a lot of things that feel really, really good. Why let yourself forget about them?




These next few blogs wil each feature some of those things. Mind you, they're what feel good to me. I'm not into suspension piercings or ultramarathons, but even my potentially-mundane good things might not feel good to everyone; I just hope to get them out on e-paper, as it were, & maybe you'll all have some insights on your own 50 things...and why they're so important to engage in...









Disclaimer: The 50 Things are in no way arranged according to importance. Structure is for suckers.









1. Working, and working hard. I'm not gonna lie. At certain points, I too have done the bare minimum, somewhere, in some way. And it didn't feel good. What does feel good is this: the sense of purpose, ambition and satisfaction I get from realising a job well done. This, noumenally, is enough most of the time. The praise I get for doing said 'good job' is icing on the cake. There's something deeply personally fulfilling about even the simple things: vacuuming my house. Cleaning out my email inbox. Finishing a book that's been half-read for weeks. Now, on a much larger, more meaningful scale, I can say that I went 'to work'-active tense-and worked. And worked hard. Gave something my all, & have come away from it with a renewed sense of purpose, of my place in the concentric circles that define our actions in the world. The ripple effect might start as a small drop in a specific place, but what happens later sends us far, & our ambitions wide.









2. Singing along. Generally speaking, I'm not much of a singer. But there's something about caterwauling along with whatever's on the iPod playlist or radio that just feels awesome. Vibration & resonance are key influences in my life, whether they be auditory, concussive, or human, & the fact that signing involves all 3 of these things makes it heavenly. There's a happy, energetic vibe that goes with singing along no matter the song, & even (or especially) if you don't know the words; perhaps it stems from rattling one's own ribcage, resonating out to meet all the sounds coming toward us: ambient white noise, traffic speeding & stopping, the friend sitting next to you trying to harmonize. Perhaps we're tapping into a greater, benevolent, universal vibration that we can't hear audibly but feel all the time. Maybe it's similar to little kids who holler just because it's fun. Either way, it feels good, & it's free.









3. Cooking something from scratch. Especially for someone deprived of home-cookin'. Again, I confess: I use precanned tomato sauce to put on pizza. Thai peanut sauce from the Asian food market. These are not 'made from scratch' as we know it, but the fact remains: I love to cook, & I love it the most-est when there is someone else around to eat. Last weekend, I made pizza. The crust was from scratch, with rosemary sea salt sprinkled on top, & the toppings provided by the 3 bro-tastic dudes from down the road. Someone said it was the best pizza they'd ever had. My friend Ean, who considers himself a connoisseur of pizza based on his lifelong obsession with the Ninja Turtles, called it "pretty damn good". And hearing all that felt, well, pretty damn good! Some of my favorite memories & recurring nostalgias come from the kitchen: making enchiladas for my little brothers & finding all the pans empty; attempting extravagant & sometimes ill-conceived dishes with my best friend on a winter's night, when it's been too cold to go outside; improvising gourmet camp cookery while in the wilderness. If you are what you eat, then I'm good memories, full flavors & love.









4. Telling someone-including yourself-that you're awesome. And meaning it. Anyone who says they don't spend a lot of time being too hard on themselves is probably lying to you. If they're not lying to you, chances are their sense of self is ego-driven, not sincere. Just as there's a big, big difference between false modest & humbleness, there's a vast disparity in the number of times we're prone to sarcastically saying, "Oh man. I just effed that up, 'cause I'm awesome.", & saying I'M AWESOME & meaning it. I have little pep talks with myself a lot. Meaning, my ego-driven self-the one that gets embarassed, insecure or feels inadequate-and my true Self. Self, I say,So and So might be going to Southeast Asia to save turtles. Or making 6 figures. Or have found the love of his/her life. Or whatever. But here's a list of all the shit YOU'VE done, that, quite frankly, is pretty badass. And it's a LONG list. I've traveled Japan, Europe, Australia, Canada and Mexico. I've hugged a lot of people. Opened as a spoken-word poet for Buddy Wakefield, Sage Francis, Alix Olson & Jerry Quickley. Rescued multiple dogs. Backpacked & hiked hundreds of miles. And more than anything, have the best family, friends & community ever. Too often we get caught in the cyclical & self-sustaining So yeah. I'm awesome. I mean it.





5. Smelling flowers. You don't need to intone the classic, "Jesus, you're a hippie" line. I can hear it wafting off you already. But before you scoff at this one, ask yourself when the last time you had an authentic, primal olfactory experience was. I do it all the time: juxtapose a natural scent with my own inorganic, artificial associatives. It tastes like fake banana. It smells like wet paint. This morning, while walking Puck, I picked a stalk of foamflower & smelled it, which I'd never done before-foamflower is ubiquitous around here & I'd just never though to see if it had a smell, since it doesn't give one off in the sun, or permeate the air. As I put my nose to it, there it was, distinctly & unmistakeably: watermelon (fresh from the vine, sliced on a paper plate) & cracked black pepper. Smells have the power to unlock a memory, reinventing & recreating the schema by which we define other things, allowing us to make associations we haven't before. I've never eaten watermelon with cracked black pepper on it, nor had I smelled a foamflower-those little white stars on a single stem-before. You can bet I'll try one, & keep on doing the other, now.