100 Days of Happiness & 500 Days of Summer

At the time of this posting, someone I know will be approximately 25-30% complete with her personal "100 Happy Days" Instagram project. The goal is for her to make the most out of the next 100 consecutive days, to discover joy and happiness from the conspicuous and the clandestine, the ordinary and the extraordinary. By doing so, she hopes to become a completely different person - a person who is more loving, grateful, and appreciative of the life she's been given, regardless of what trials and tribulations she'll face along the way. I'm hoping she won't mind if I put a link here to her IG account, so you can see her progress yourself!

Her 100 days of happiness project has been making me think of my personal happiness as of late. Somewhere between losing "Rachel" and dealing with the monotony of work and school, I've lost the drive to make the most of life and embrace the simple pleasures of daily life while committing the fantastical moments to memory. This is alarming, considering that one of my key resolutions for this year (and perhaps to infinity and beyond) is to finish the year in a more happier state of mind. With this in mind, I do want to refocus my perspectives on life and try to be more mindful of what's around me, who I interact with, and what feel (physically speaking) on a day-to-day basis. I don't think I'll be devoting a 100-Day crusade to my personal happiness anytime soon. Although, if I did, #Day1 would involve 500 Days of Summer.

To this day, I can't remember how I came to discover this film - I don't remember anyone sharing this movie with me, nor do I recall ever seeing any promos of any sort for the movie. All I can remember is that I've somehow always known about it, in the same way people always just knew how to breathe, and I'm fine with that. This is one of those movies that always gives me that "pick-me-up" feeling, knowing that life has a funny way of saying that it's aware of who you are, and somehow, I'm always inspired to try and pursue a more active love life (whatever that may be) again and again. This is really the first time I've really noticed Joseph-Gordon Levitt (although I knew he was once in 3rd Rock from the Sun in his teen years, and he's been in other films prior to this one) and over the years, he's become one of my celebrity man-crushes (but I'm digressing here). The same applies to Zooey Deschanel - I only recognized her after I realized that she was also in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as Trillian. I never really noticed how beautiful Zooey was until seeing this movie, mostly because we (just like JGL) saw her beauty in the most subtle of ways: her eyes, her hair, the way she laughs, the way she sleeps...rather than "taking it all in," we're given these little glimpses of her, of who she is, and when it's all compiled together, it's her (again, I digress, which is something I always do, I suppose). This is why my #Day1 would be this movie.

Reading and Falling Behind

Once again, I've edited my Comprehensive Reading List, CRL for short (as always), for what seems like the 10th time this year. My book count, over this year, has jumped exponentially from 51 or 52 (pretty much somewhere in the low 50's) to a new total of 68. As of now, I'm at approximately 63.63% of accomplishing my goal of this year. It's been such a hard trek in trying to read as much as possible. The cool (and annoying part) of this is that I'm more likely to go down on my progress than go up. This is so mostly because I add books than cross them off, but I'm doing my best to read two books for every one that's added. So, that's a good thing. =D

However, that's not where I'm falling behind actually. For one of my classes that is studying social changes on a macro level (this meaning across a lengthy period of time - in this case, human history), we have to read this textbook called Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development (Expanded Edition) by Stephen K. Sanderson. Our professor warned us that this book will be a challenging read, since the book was written for Sociology grad students, not undergrad students. And reading this book is, well, pretty damn hard. In one of my earlier sociology classes, my professor pointed out that many books academic books are written with a specific lingo or lexicon that seems to shut out any other curious minds outside of that particular field (in other words, she argues that academic books should serve to enlighten everybody, including the everyday man, instead of a select few). 

Anyhow, reading this book makes running in water an easier task to perform. I was supposed to read chapter 1 by Saturday (yesterday), chapter 2 by tomorrow (Monday, which I haven't) and chapter 3 by (Wednesday, which probably won't happen) if I'm going to fully comprehend the lectures and classwork that I'm expected to complete effectively. Hence, I've fallen behind already.