Since upgrading my poor, obselete iPhone 4S to iOS7, I’ve been experiencing a lot of bugs. Apps I regularly use, such as Facebook, Instagram, and even mail, take 5-10 times as long to load as they previously did. The worst issue I’ve encountered since this “upgrade” is that one of my favorite apps, 1 Second Every Day (1SE) constantly crashes. I will be cutting a video for a given day, and it will crash. Then, it will only allow me to cut and save a video if I only use the very first second of the video, which defeats the whole purpose of cutting the clip. It’s made me fall severely behind because I’m trying to make a 1 Second Every Day video for each month.

Then I realized I could stop complaining about it and just reset my iPhone when the app repeatedly crashed. What a good solution. 🙂 And now I’ve finished April and May finally and have caught up!

Tonight, I watched Happy, a documentary made in 2011 that explores what truly makes human beings happy. It combines scientific studies as well as personal experiences of individuals all over the world. My friend recommended it to me after he saw it. He said it really made him think more about all of the stupid first world problems we have and complain about, and he realized how he had to curb some of that thinking (the biggest one being “I don’t have time to <fill in the blank with something you know is important but you are just too lazy to do>”).

Based on the research, the scientists found that 50% of “happiness” is out of our control and completely based on genetics (great, not sure how I fare there), while 10% of it is based on our circumstances – where we are, what we are doing with our lives, who our friends and lover are and how they treat us, etc. That leaves 40% completely up to us – the actions we choose to take, the mantras we live by, the thoughts we allow ourselves to have. Most people are surprised when they hear that only 10% of happiness is based on life circumstances; after some thought, I completely understand that because as people, we tend to adapt, some slower than others, to whatever new situation we are in, whether it’s braces, diabetes, a missing arm, or anything. The scary thing is that half our happiness is completely genetic, and that 40% that we are in control of has to work that much harder to what we are predisposed to (notice I say that as though everyone’s genetics are as screwed up as my family’s is).

I think my 40% probably needs to work harder that Chris’s does, and I’m sure lots of other people I know and do not know have their 40% working harder than mine has to. It’s very relative in terms of what you have been through in life. It feels in some ways that life is a constant battle to be happy and feel fulfilled, but I still believe it is worth it.

Last night, I had dinner with a former colleague who got… fired. She’s happy now at another company, and we’ve kept in touch since her departure. Over wine and salad, we chatted about what she’s been up to since leaving, and she told me that although there were people who had not reached out to her at my company who she was friends with, she was sure that they did care. I couldn’t hide my irritation at her naivete and flat out told her that she was deluded if she thought that they actually cared; if they were “friends,” wouldn’t they have already reached out to her even once during this whole time?!

She didn’t readily believe me until I told her without any details that my brother passed away last July, and there were a number of people who saw me afterwards (when I went back to my old company to drop off my security card and laptop) and said that they “had wanted” to reach out, but they weren’t sure what to say, so they didn’t say anything. Yes, because inaction proves that you care – it actually says more about how you don’t care. Well, to be fair, I have some friends who are so emotionally fucked up that their own emotional blocks prevented them from reaching out to me, and they are still my friends today. Either way, my point was that when your life really sucks – when someone significant in your life dies, you lose your job, your house burns down – those are the most revealing moments in your life when it comes to determining who really cares and who doesn’t. And when you’ve come to that realization, you become aware that the people who don’t care aren’t worth any of your time.

After that story, she believed me and said she wouldn’t reach out to those people.

After dinner ended and I took the train home, I got out at my subway stop and checked my phone. I received a text from my newly employed friend that said, “July is not far away. Can we do something on the anniversary, for your brother?” I could feel my eyes well up with tears when I read this. I realize that I haven’t actively thought about the “anniversary” much, except when during my last meeting with my therapist, she told me to be aware that I might get moody as the day approached, and I may not be conscious of it at all. She told me that I should think about what I might want to do, if anything, to remember him on that day.

I’m not sure what I want to do honestly. But I get a warm, hopeful feeling knowing that there are people who want to help me remember Ed.

I am in shock that we’ve reached the sixth month of the year already. I feel like there are a lot of things I need to do that I haven’t even started. I guess that’s the feeling in general when you have a long list of goals to accomplish – you can never feel like you’ve accomplished enough of them, otherwise it’s as though you are telling yourself that you’re not challenging yourself enough.

And when the weather gets warmer and the air more humid, I tend to get sleepier. This summer needs to be a productive summer – there are too many things to do and cook and eat and see, and a lot of things I promised I would do for Ed. Laziness is not allowed.