Positivity

So, first off, hello friends and friendly strangers.  My name is Jennifer and this is my very first post to Berg is the Word.  I am a twenty-three (almost twenty-four ahh!) -year old teacher and writer -- who should be doing a hell of a lot more writing.  So here I go...

Although I signed up for this blog two months ago, I have just now began writing on it because, like so many others, my life took precedence. Unfortunately, I found myself unhappily drudging through life's little responsibilities and requirements until I finally remembered that I was the facilitator of most of those horrid duties.  So here I am tonight, ignoring my lesson planning and graduate school thesis research and television addiction to write to everyone and no one and anyone.

My life has been kind of sucking lately.  (Whose isn't these days, right?)  I would like to remove myself from the blackness and get into a better state of mind without revisiting my antidepressant days (I will go into that at a later date).  I decided to pick up the book, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne.  I had watched the beginning of the movie with a good friend of mine and we both turned it off within a matter of five minutes for being utterly cheesy and straight up weird.  However, the book was recommended to me by one of my closest friends whose opinion I value a great deal.  So, this afternoon, when I went to Barnes and Noble on East 17th and Union Square for my Writers Group meeting, I bought this book.  And, yes, I said "bought" and not downloaded.  Shocking, I know.  It's probably the first non-academic book I've actually held in my hands since purchasing Eat, Pray, Love two years ago.  I love my Sony E-book Reader to death, but I must say, there's something kind of nice about holding a little book in your hands and flipping through real pages and not worrying about any batteries dying or searching for an outlet to plug into.  I think we are way too reliant on electricity these days -- but, again, that's for a later date.  Back to The Secret.

The Secret's entire message is positive thinking.  Be positive positive positive.  It really made me put things into perspective.  My thoughts are so negative that they're borderline clinically depressing.  And I wonder why I am constantly in a bad mood.  I, like most people, will find things to blame my moodiness on (i.e. job, debt, arguments) and yet I don't do anything to change those things (I keep my job because I need to pay my bills, I continue to charge to my credit cards, and I seem to argue about the same things with the same people).  Therefore, I need to change my mindset (and my spending habits, haha).  I am going to follow the teachings of The Secret and share my thoughts in this blog.  It could be life-changing, who knows.  It could also suck and prove to be completely useless.  We shall see.  Only time will tell.

The first step: Think up a good thought.  And, no, this is not Hook.  I'm not saying that I'll be able to fly with a happy memory and some fairy dust.  But, hey, if something makes me smile a little more and stops me from drowning into myself then I'm going to try it.  And I don't think it's wrong to want to have a little happiness in life.  That's why God invented love, and puppies, and ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.  Yeah, if we weren't supposed to be happy, then there would definitely be no rainbow sprinkles.

Second step: Keep thinking happy thoughts.  Do not get sucked in to your old ways.  Think about what you want your life to be and the universe will bring it to you. I am personally going to think about winning the powerball (just kidding -- kind of).  But, no, really, I am going to think of my own private thought and you can think of yours if you'd like to be a part of this little Secretive Experiment.  

I want this to work so badly that I feel like it just might.  Step 3 is technically supposed to be Meditation.  But I've never been good at shutting down my mind and waiting for the world to slip away so that I can be left with a sea of nothingness and solidarity and oneness with the earth.  I'm more of a I'm-thinking-about-crap-even-in-my-sleep kind of girl.  But to each his own.  

I've decided to name my blog titles "The First Secret," "The Second Secret," etc...because everything I say here is a secret about myself that I have decided to share with you.  You'll probably learn a lot about me in this private room and I have come to realize that as difficult as it is for me to say certain things -- it is sometimes much more difficult for others to hear them.  So sometimes I stop sharing.  For everyone else.  But this blog is for me.  It's the treehouse I never had and the microphone I sometimes wish I could scream into.  And I don't think this is such a selfish thing to want to keep.  So now you are officially in Jen Land; I just hope you can handle it.  God knows I sometimes can't...

Jennifer