My Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

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A Fake Ad — For a Drug for the “Insufferably Cheery.”

Several thoughtful readers sent me this fake ad for Despondex, a “prescription depressant for the insufferably cheery.”

According to the ad, Despondex is “effective at reducing a range of symptoms,” such as:

  • talking to people in line at the grocery store
  • participating in community theater
  • Christmas caroling
  • collecting ceramic animal figurines
  • organizing neighborhood potlucks

The fake ad plays off Happiness Myth #1: Happy People Are Annoying and Stupid. It’s also pretty funny.

(Here’s the URL if you need it.)

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A very smart guy told me that there’s no overlap between blog readers and book readers. “Two completely different types of people,” he insisted. “The people who read blogs don’t bother with books.” I’m not so sure. I get the sense that the people that read this blog, at least, also read books. Then it occurred to me — I could just ask. If you have a second, please answer the survey question:


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Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.