Happier

When I was studying abroad I wrote this manuscript (that's like saying I wrote a screenplay, but book version. If I say I wrote a novel that implies that it was published or anyone other then me read it. Not the case) called Happier. I think that I was really into Guster at the time, or I don't know I just liked that song. But anyway, the plot of the story was as follows. A timid non-risktaking guy at IU gets dragged to the quarries one day by his more adventurous, more confident frat brothers and he is afraid to jump, until this care-free, daring, beautiful babe calls him a pussy and convinces him to jump. There's your meet-cute, IU quarries bam. Anyway, they instantly fall in love with her making him less of a bitch, his forward thinking careful planning mindset gets her to think more of her future whatever, best qualities in the other. blah blah blah. They throw darts at maps and go on vacations and everything is super happy go lucky until a fucking freight train drives through the middle of the story. Her star quarterback brother and dad get killed in a drunk driving accident on a recruiting trip to Notre Dame. (I wan't really trying to make the story an allegory for Notre Dame being evil, but looking back...it plays)

Now with her world destroyed, the female lead spirals into a world of depression, alcoholism and prescription drug abuse, the male lead's family disapproves but the male lead thinks he can "save her" from all the tragedy and make her happy. They get engaged, they have good days and bad days and ultimately the female lead dies of a prescription drug overdose, it is left unclear whether or not it was intentional. But the main theme of the story is happiness, and how you can get it. The main character is lamenting back on their life together trying to figure out if he could have done anything different to make her happier, to give their story a different ending. He comes to the conclusion that perhaps in death she was happier than she could have ever been.

That's some dark shit right? Looking back on it, it's like a Nicholas Sparks novel. (In fairness to me I had no idea who the fuck Nicholas Sparks was in 2008) Zac Efron would be fucking perfect as the lead, and I could probably get some sort of executive producer credit when the film is made. Unfortunately, all 120,000 words vanished when I fried my old HP hard drive...which made me want to overdose on prescription pills, but whatever it was probably shit anyway.

When people would ask me what I was writing about and I would give them the gist of it they would look at me like I was upset, clearly only a tortured soul could come up with something that twisted. Or perhaps I had experienced tragedy in my life, no, in fact when I start writing things I don't know what's going to happen. I'm sure other people have outlines and storyboards and shit, I come up with a few characters and just start going.

In all actuality, I fucking it abroad. I fornicated with a bunch of east coast chicks from MASS (oh how I hated how they used that. Oh yeah well we're from IN and ILL, fucking retarded) I traveled every weekend to an exotic location, I lorded at nightclubs all over Europe and my parents paid the credit card bill when I got home. It's just that we didn't have cable tv or internet (or internet porn) so after I read the 3 English books at our school library, I was forced to do something creative with my time.

So why do I bring this up? I haven't thought about the project in probably three years. I honestly don't even remember the names of the characters anymore, and one of my funny plot points (they threw a dart at a map for a weekend getaway and it landed in Little Rock, Arkansas) was used in the movie Yes Man when they did the exact same thing and ended up in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was watching last week's suicidetastic episode of Mad Men and Don had a quote "Happiness is the moment before you want more happiness."

I realized that happiness is the most addictive drug in the world. This probably isn't a revolutionary thought, I think the Beatles had a song about it, it's probably one of the weird scenes in Across the Universe that I skip. But when I apply to the general feeling of "meh" of our generation I think it's easy to see why we get so disillusioned quickly. If I never knew what it was like to jetset around the world with house money, I wouldn't crave it today. People in the "greatest generation" were poor and worked three jobs and went to war and walked to school. I didn't deal with any of that shit. I went to Disney World and fucked around in college and well into my 20's.

But because of the experiences I was afforded I now crave more and more. Take a weekend for example. I'm certain that there is a group of people out there that go out once a month, and it's probably a big deal. Young parents get babysitters, some people go out to dinner and it's like a thing. It's special because it's rare. If I have a weekend where I go out to dinner both nights and go bar hopping both nights, but nothing unique or specifically memorable happens, I consider the weekend and unacceptable failure. That's because my tolerance for happiness has been pushed so far that the little things don't get me off anymore. I would literally need to go on a Hollywood bender with Nicolas Cage to even bat an eye. Oh jesus that sounds so pretentious, "I've done so much cool shit that it doesn't even seem cool anymore." But I hope you can look past my douchery and see the larger point.

People send me screenplays all the time and they're like "So it's a post college kid who like thought he was going to get a Wall Street job but didn't because of the economy and then got chewed up and spit out...it's a coming of age tale." Every disillusioned half-assed writer is telling their version of that story. HBO has a show about it. They've made movies about it. The story they don't tell, is that we are just privileged little shits and we whine about it. Had we not grown up in 3 car families with "emergency family credit cards" in our wallets we may be a little more resilient. Or perhaps we've just lost all of our endorphines because no one can see a live show anymore without popping a few pills.

Happiness is not a drug, it's an attitude. It's how you react to your present situation and whether you look to the future with excitement or angst. I'm more guilty than the rest at talking about things without doing them. I am still an unpublished author but I do what I can to improve my well being. Never be the pussy that's afraid to jump into the quarry. If you want something, take it. If you want to go somewhere, go. The how and why are just details, but if it will make you happier, it would be insane to let anything stand in the way.