Episode 28: Resenting Your Happy Place

I really go out of my way to not engage with internet culture or a lot of reviews or anything else when it comes to entertainment stuff.
And in this context, I'm really talking about movies, films, movies. I find anymore that the culture that surrounds that has become so sensationalized, so polarized, right? I dislike polarizing or polarized subcultures where things have to be amazing or terrible.
Also, I would far prefer to kind of figure things out, like make my own assessment of things.
And then I will often go look at some reviews and stuff and see if the things that I'm thinking line up with other people's thoughts that in the past I've enjoyed listening to or whatever.
But I try not to do it at the upfront.
Recently, I saw the trailer for – or the teaser or the trailer or whatever it was – for the upcoming Happy Gilmore sequel.
And I saw it and I actually – so Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison kind of hold like a very fond, special place for me in my heart.
I don't know. They came out at a time in my life where they were both edgy but approachable and there is a certain heartfeltness to those movies, but it's mixed with a lot of, you know, again, from the time, fairly edgy comedy.
Anyway, I always look at those movies very fondly.
So, seeing the sequel for Happy Gilmore, I watched through the trailer, which a lot of times I don't even do that anymore because it tends to spoil so much.
And I have to say, from the trailer, it really looks pretty fun and pretty heartfelt and kind of tugs at the heartstrings, warming kind of thing.
I don't know. I got a good vibe from it.
I started with a preface around not really talking or listening to a lot of reviews and things because, for all I know, the rest of the internet watched this thing and was like, oh, garbage is terrible or, you know, some controversy about some actor that did something and, you know, tripped on the sidewalk at once and, you know, accidentally squashed an ant.
Like, whatever. All the controversy stuff I could really do without.
But just from an assessment of the trailer and my own viewpoint, I thought it looked pretty good.
A big thrust of this trailer, a big cornerstone of it, was really leaning into the theme from Happy Gilmore around Happy Place.
You know, for those of you maybe who don't remember or never saw Happy Gilmore, in that movie, he, when he would get frustrated, he had to learn to go to his quote-unquote happy place to recenter himself, focus, and that would enable him to play golf better or do whatever he was doing better.
So, this trailer seems to be the main theme of the trailer, much more than the first one, which was much more about this kind of, you know, crazy hockey player who was going to play golf and whatever.
This one, at least the trailer, really leaned on the Happy Place thing.
Also, sometime over the last few weeks, I saw a post somewhere, and I couldn't find it again.
I tried looking for it, and I don't have the exact wording.
So, I'm just going to give you the kind of general gist of what this was getting at.
It was saying something along the lines of, you want to be able to find that thing that lets you tune the world out or lets you recenter yourself, refocus yourself.
It's this idea of, and maybe you can relate, people tend to have an activity or two or a hobby or two or whatever you want to call them that often can recenter them.
That no matter what mood they're in or the swirl of life or whatever, if they're able to convince themselves to go and do this particular activity, it will help them recenter.
Or, you know, I don't know, it could be woodworking for someone, or it could be, you know, playing a musical instrument or whatever.
But people tend to inherently, I think, have an activity or two that allows them to recenter.
So, these two things sort of cross over in my head.
I know they're not exactly the same.
I think the point of the post was really around, make sure you have one of these.
And I don't remember if it was really about a stress management thing where it was like, oh, you know, you can always go do this.
Or if it was more of like a professional thing that was talking about, well, if you can find a way for that to be your professional life.
Or, I don't know.
I don't really remember the point of the post, what it was, what the aim of it was.
But I remember these pieces about, it was talking about an activity.
This Happy Gilmore thing is more of a conceptual idea of go to your happy place.
But to me, these two things have a lot of crossover.
It's this idea of sort of your own little personal zen garden.
Or zen idea.
Or being able to zero yourself in, refocus, recenter.
And almost naturally shed the world and shed the weight of things going on.
And even if your mind is a cluttered mess and you're spinning in a thousand directions, if you can, and I'll just speak for myself.
If I can convince myself to do one of these activities, it might be hard to start.
But after a few minutes of it, it's amazing how the rest of the world just peels away.
So for me, this has long been a bit of a challenge.
When I was in high school, I was in an AP, an advanced placement programming course built around C++ at the time.
And I had largely been taking this course because it was a loophole where I got to skip doing regular math courses.
And this counted as a math credit.
So I was able to take programming, which I, you know, came pretty naturally.
And I could just skip, you know, high school for me was all about finding loopholes.
So anyway, I was in this advanced placement C++ course.
I, I, I do not mean to come off sounding arrogant, but I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that within a class of, I don't know, there was probably 20 kids in there.
Within that class, I was at least, at least top three in terms of people who were able to perform in this class.
And in reality, I was probably the best one there.
But just for the sake of argument, let's say, you know, top couple.
I chose not to take the advanced placement test, which would have given me then college credit.
And my teacher was appalled.
My teacher was like, how could you not do this?
Like, and I think he even some, some point said, like, why, why are you even in here?
You know, obviously you're very good at this, but you, you don't, you don't even seem to want to do it.
But my, my mindset at the time was, I don't want to end up in a cubicle typing up programs.
Like, I don't want to end up working for some bank programming my life away.
It sounded horrible.
So, I was really good at it, but I didn't really want to do it.
Over the years, I then went into college and I went into a psychology program.
And even through my psychology program, I ended up doing some programming work along the way.
Because again, it came naturally.
And then I ended up going to grad school for computer science, where there was some programming along the way in there.
I came out, I ended up doing professional work as a web developer for a while.
I became more in a leadership and management roles, where I became a director and eventually a CIO.
I would do less and less programming, but I would still dive into it here and there when necessary.
After evaluating some of this over the last couple of months, I've realized that programming is my happy place.
For better or for worse, and I'll say that why in a second, but for better or for worse,
once I get into writing some code, and I start working through a problem in that way,
the world peels away for me.
It just disappears.
And I'm entirely centered and focused on this solving whatever problem is in front of me.
I don't like this.
It almost bothers me.
Because I always wanted my happy place to come from something else.
I wanted it to be playing a guitar.
Or I wanted it to be working on a car.
Or I wanted it to be, I don't know, maybe doing something with my kids.
I don't know, something, right?
And I'm not saying I don't enjoy those things.
I do.
I've been a guitar player for a long time.
I play a lot less than I used to, of course.
But the difference, and I'll just use that as an example,
the difference between playing a guitar and picking that up and sitting down and programming for me is a world apart.
Even though I enjoy both activities, in one case,
and I do believe that a secondary happy place for me is playing music with other people.
But in terms of playing solo by myself, just picking up a guitar and just me playing,
I don't find that that leads me to as happy or as focused of a place.
It always feels a little harder if I never quite get the same focus.
I'm never quite in that zone the same way it is after, you know,
five, ten minutes of solid problem solving while writing some Python or something.
I wish it was different.
And this actually gives me conflict in myself because I always thought my happy place would be a little different.
But on the same token, when I get into it, I really enjoy it.
And I seem to be pretty good at it.
But it causes a certain interesting conflict within myself.
And I just wonder if there are other people out there who have similar things.
I'm sure that there are.
And I wonder, have you ever thought about what your happy place really is?
Have you spent some time figuring out?
Are you being honest with yourself about what your happy place is?
About the place that really zones you in and keeps you centered?
Or are you hoping that your happy place is one thing and you're trying to force it
and it leads to you never really finding what that thing is?
The conclusion that I'm slowly rolling around to, I think, in my head
is that, A, I'm always a big believer of kind of like
be the river, not the rock, or whatever that saying is, right?
You don't, you don't have to, you shouldn't spend your time just constantly trying to push
against the grain.
If I am inherently centered and zoned in and I can refocus myself by doing something like
programming, which again, it's not that I don't enjoy it.
It's just that I always had this more, this higher idea of like, oh, it should be, I should
be making music when I'm centered or, you know, some other activity like that.
But I should lean into that, right?
I should use that to my advantage.
Being honest with myself and saying, no, dude, actually, it turns out your happy place is
this other thing that I know you don't love it or you don't love the idea that that is
what the happy place is, but it really, really works.
And so leaning into that is the right idea.
So I wonder where you fall on this.
I'd love to hear what your happy places might be.
And whether or not you think you've been honest with yourself over your life about,
is it what you think it is?
Or are you trying to force something that you hope it is?
And maybe just thinking about that for a minute and deciding if, if, deciding if there's
some other way to be that river and not the rock.