Trying to Be Happy

For the last few weeks I have been taking a course in How to Be Less Anxious. It consists of reading materials, mental and breathing exercises and a weekly, hour-long phone conversation with my happiness guru. Not surprisingly, I am failing it.

The homework consists of doing things like "install a pleasant memory" whenever you are feeling anxiety coming on. In case this does not come naturally, I'm supposed to set an alarm on my cell phone to ring every hour to remind me to think happy thoughts. I did this for the first couple of days until finally the alarm got so annoying that each time it rang I flashed on a murderous rampage. I took that as counterproductive and so eventually shut off the alarm.

Today is the last day of my course. Thank goodness, I can go back to being me. My instructor told me that out of the approximately 100 people he has worked with, I am the only "failure." That's something, I guess.