I'm going to keep this post quite short as I'm still pretty tired, as I'm sure everyone is, after this holiday season. I've got to hit the hay early tonight.
Let's see, catching up on a few pics I haven't yet posted. One is of me with the Perfect 10 hairdye on my head and the other is me basking in the anti-S.A.D. light I purchased according to the guidance on Oprah.com. Can you tell which is which? And finally - a kind of crappy picture of Jim posing next to two of our not art until you hang it on the wall and call it art pieces. This was from a Nate Berkus-themed show a while back. These are old painted heating vent covers we found in an antique store, cleaned up and hung on the wall and started calling art. Had I known it was so easy to create art, I could have relaxed a little in grad school as I worked toward my MFA.
I hope you all have a marvelous weekend!
xo
LO
PS. This weekend, I'll watch my recorded show on happiness from yesterday. I took the happiness test online as a few folks advised (see morepower's comment from Thursday's post). I scored a 28. I almost retook the test and padded the truth a bit to get a higher score. WHAT HAS BECOME OF ME?! Now I get the urge to CHEAT to appear happier? Sure, I didn't act on the dishonesty, but still. Anyone know a good cult deprogrammer I can call? Someone who has done a successful extraction of a Stepford wife from her home, perhaps?
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14 comments:
Those vents look really cool, but I don't know if I'd call them art. Nate would though, so who am I to argue with that cutie?
Your MFA joke made me snort soda out of my nose!
Cool vents, cute hubby. :>)
Don't beat yourself up for watching O. Just because you don't have to watch doesn't mean you're not allowed. Now you watch because you choose to, not because you must. Freedom!
Even habits we hate are hard to break (exhibit A: my nail biting). You've never hated O at all (or this would have been really difficult!). The SuperKids, though...you're a strong woman. Are you secretly looking forward to new shows next week?
And the vents look good. The MFA came through for you. If I had found vents and put them on the wall, they would look like a demented contractor came through, not like found art at all.
Hope you're enjoying the SAD light--I'd love an update on that at some point!
Happy new year! And if the look on his face is any clue, your husband a) adores you and b) was as eagerly awaiting the end of this as you.
I think that there's a subtext (or maybe not so "sub") to Oprah that tells us that everything, even happiness, is an achievement and that we are lacking somehow if we don't have it. Or maybe that is just the way we are conditioned.
I like the vents--but then I like architectural salvage. Some of it is art, in a way, since it was part of the architecture of a building. And back in the day some of this stuff was hand-crafted. It's art, it's just not Art. (He's my friend's fiance. Ha!)
It's funny: at the end of 2008, watching Oprah was a chore that you could barely stand. Now you can't stop! I wondered what was going on when you said that your husband taped it yesterday.
I guess it's like anything else, a cup of coffee in the morning, reading the newspaper, watching a favorite movie. Routine and familiarity can be comforting.
Congrats on making it through the year!!! I loved the pictures. I wouldn't be able to make arcitechtural salvage look like art. I can take pictures just fine though.
Okay, I scored a 26 and I feel pretty darn happy! 5 questions and all your happiness is decided? I don't think so!
Congrats on your accomplishment1
Samantha in LB, CA
I've lived my whole life only encountering three other Paula's, and now there are three of us commenting on your blog! AAIIEEEE!
I wondered if you could go cold turkey. I hope you will be able to. It's a mixed blessing to be caught up in the comet trail of Oprah. I will be watching her shows next week, because at this point in my life, I have as much weight to lose as she does with the same health challenges to overcome, and I'm very interested to see if this will work. I notice all her health experts are men, however, and I don't think that bodes well for her eventual success. Things happen to women's bodies that can't really be quantified. Constellations of little things that add up to big things and you can't really tell where to apply rememdies to achieve a desired outcome. And there will be conflicting advice - Bob Greene will have her working out for hours while the doctors will be telling her that more than 30 minutes of exercise every day will cause inflammation. I'm curious to see if that will be handled and how it will be handled.
On junk art - when I married, my husband brought a lot of junk art to our home. It felt very inauthentic. I felt we were always on display. People would come over and we'd have to host a tour to explain what the stuff was. None of it came from our lives, and it just didn't make sense to me to keep it. It felt pretentious. It feels much more real to have stuff that is connected to who we are now.
Confession--I hardly ever watch Oprah. At my age-in my 50's-I don't let anyone dictate to me what my best life should look like. I have enjoyed this blog though. It's the only one that I read regularly. I agree with Paula who mentioned that Oprah gets her health advice from men and that may not be the best. Bob Greene doesn't seem to have done her much permanent good and I wonder why she retains him. At least two of her medical experts are ardent New Agers-Dr.Oz and Christiane
Northrup. Oprah's website abounds with New Age philosophers. Can't one of them give her the weight loss key she is searching for?
Am I an overachiever? I scored a 34 on the happiness test. I was thinking of doing some of the Your Best Life things, but my life is pretty happy, so I dunno. I think Oprah needs to learn that her Best Life and key to happiness has nothing whatever to do with weight and fitness but self acceptance and gratitude.
Watching Oprah is totally an addiction. Even when I get irked or tired of O, I still watch (or multitask to) Oprah.
IamSusie a score of 34 is amazing! That's almost as high as Oprah (didn't she score a perfect 35, though that show aired back in 2007so the results may not still apply). Either your life is really really good, or you're just genetically predisposed to be happy, regardless of circumstances.
I asked the Daily Kos political blog to take the test. Of the 297 people who have taken it so far, your are happier than 97% (according to this test). Oprah was/is happier than at least 98% (the ceiling of the test). And LO is happier than 75%:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/3/9221/
17621/625/679742
So to answer the question LO poses at the top of her blog, will committing wholeheartedly to Oprah's life style suggestions bring her bliss; well perhaps not bliss, but it did make her happier than three out of every four Americans (or at least three out of every four Daily Kos readers)
Was the expense (financial, time, energy) worth the result? It must have been or her depression over the cost would have outweighed her joy over the benefits and she would not be happy.
So we actually have semi-scientific proof that following Oprah's advice (even when taken to comical & sometimes ridiculous extremes) actually makes you happy (or at least doesn't make you unhappy). That may not be what LO intended to prove but a good scientist runs the experiment, measures the results objectively, and lets the chips fall where they may.
morepower- We don't know how well LO would have done on the test at the beginning of the year. If her test score had improved, that might show that following Oprah's advice improved her life. But all the test now proves is that she's happier than a lot of other people. Maybe she's just naturally happier. Maybe she's happier DESPITE following Oprah's advice, maybe she would have scored better before starting this process. I don't think we can draw any firm scientific conclusions from LO's happiness test results. :)
AnotherJenn, I agree we can't draw any firm scientific conclusions which is why I called it *SEMI*-scientific proof in my post. It's hard to draw any scientific conclusions at all based on a sample of one person, but I agree, ideally we would want LO's test scores from a year ago.
But as LO mentioned before, she took Dr. Oz's real age test twice, once on Feb 21 2008, and again on Dec 27 2008. If my math is roughly correct, the first time she took the test she was 35.17 years old and had a real age of 29.5. The second time she took the test she was 35.997 years old and had a real age of 29.6. If we calculate her youthfulness Quotient (YQ) as of Feb 21, 2008, by dividing her chronological age by her real age and multiplying by 100 to get rid of the decimal point, we get:
(35.17/29.5)* 100 = 119
Then when we calculate her YQ on Dec 27, 2008 (when her experiment was almost done) we get:
(35.997/29.6)* 100 = 122
So just 10 months of following Oprah's advice made her 3 YQ points more youthful, and about a thousand times more famous :-)
morepower- my life is really really ordinary, so I do think I have that genetic thing for happiness although I have had some very low times related to moving or hormones and childbirth. My dad in particular is a calm, supportive, spiritual person and always gives out the sense that everything is going to turn out alright.
I am amazed at your statistical analysis!
Morepower, that Youthfulness Quotient is hilarious! What does it mean? I have ancestors that lived into their hundreds, but based upon the questions in the Real Age test, they shouldn't have because they all smoked from a young age, ate full fat dairy products, had no medical care whatsoever for anything, let their rotten teeth fall out, drank home made whiskey, lived in a dangerous environment. I really believe that if it's not your time, you're not going to go no matter what you do. But I love your analysis!
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