By Pierre Bastien

I’ve made some changes to the branding of this blog over the past few days.

Firstly the blog has been renamed The Happy Grownup. I was always a bit bothered by the fact that this site was named, in one way or another, “Pierre Bastien”. I’d rather be writing about something people can get behind, and my own name wasn’t doing it for me.

It took me a while to figure out a good alternative, though. Mostly because it took me a really long time to figure out what I liked writing about.

The Happy Grownup seems like a good fit because, as it turns out, I write often about happiness and how to find it. That’s where the Happy comes from. I also write frequently about my kids, and generally dealing with adulthood, so I though Grownup was a good modifier. Or I guess, Happy is technically the modifier, but whatever.

I deliberated for not-that-long about whether to add the “The” at the beginning. In the end I decided to add the “The”. It’s messier. And it gives Sean Parker a reason to come tell me to drop the “The” down the line.

So, The Happy Grownup. There you have it. I like that it does what it says on the tin. If you’re a grownup, come here and I’ll tell you what I’m learning about becoming happier.

I also moved the blog to its own domain, www.happygrownup.com. In this case, I did drop the “The”. Take that, Sean Parker!

Welcome to The Happy Grownup.

This post also has one other change that only the most devoted readers would notice. The look of my cartoons have changed a bit. That’s because I’ve started experimenting with drawing using an open-source program called Inkscape. Previously, I was using Illustrator, which is a great program, but I’m happy in my own dorky way to be using an open-source program instead. My cartoons are now outputted as SVG files instead of PNGs, which I won’t even go into here, but please let me know if you’re unable to view the cartoons.

I’m inviting everyone to join me on Wednesday, February 29th for No iPod Day. The only rule of no iPod day is you can’t listen to music using earphones.

The goal of this challenge is to become more aware of how I’m often tuning myself out from the world, blocking off my ear canals and pumping music directly into my brain. I’m doing this, in short, because I think I use my iPod too much. I want to see what it’s like without one, just to try it out.

So let’s say you buy the idea that it’s good to take a break from your iPod, if even for a day. What can do you instead of listening to your headphones?

I practiced this last week on my trip to New York. I didn’t go the whole way without headphones, but I did keep them off during my 30 minutes on the NYC subway, as a way of practicing. Here are some things I found worth doing:

• Look around. Notice people. Count how many people are wearing headphones. I was expecting to find that more than half the people would be wearing them, but I was way off. It was much less. I’d say almost as little as 10% of the people were wearing headphones.
• Listen to your own thoughts. What do you think about when you’re just riding around? Where do your thoughts go? Try to notice the thoughts flitting through your brain but then let them go and return to just standing or sitting there. This is a form of meditation, and it’s quite relaxing.
• Wonder. Let’s say you’re on a train. Take a minute to think about who built the train, where all the parts for the train came from, who laid the train tracks, who drives the train, who uses the train. You might not be on a train, but wherever you are, take a minute to appreciate it.

These are just a few ideas. When I tried them last week, I found it very relaxing. This is important — avoiding my iPod was not some sort of punishment, it was an opportunity to be a bit more aware of my surroundings and interested in them.

Walk down the street, sit on a train, or fly on a plane, and what do you see? Most likely, many people with wires coming out of their ears. They’ve got earphones stuffed deep into their eardrums, drowning out the sounds of the world by blasting music directly into their brains.

I do this too. In fact I love listening to music while I’m on the go.

But I started thinking, what if we all spent a day without iPods or other music players crammed into our ears? What would happen?

Maybe instead of running away from our world by short-circuiting one of our senses, we could stop to appreciate it. Or at least acknowledge it.

We could all hear the sounds of the world around us for a change. We’d have a new appreciation for the people in our world. We could hear someone saying, “Excuse me” as they are trying to get by us. We might have a conversation with someone we wouldn’t normally talk to. We’d save our ears from a day’s worth of pounding, a day’s worth of hearing loss.

We would also hear a baby crying or a couple fighting. Sounds that might be considered unpleasant. We would learn to face this kind of reality even when we’re not used to doing so.

It can’t be that tough to deal with. After all, portable music was only invented recently. Somehow, we humans made it 200,000 years without portable music. Surely we could handle one more day without it.

Putting down our iPods for a day doesn’t mean we have to stop listening to music. We could listen to it on the stereo, or go to a concert. Listen to music in an open space, with other people, instead of closing ourselves off from the world.

And I’m not saying we should all toss out our earphones for good. On the contrary, a day without iPods will encourage us to appreciate even more the technology that we enjoy almost every other day.

Are you with me? Let’s do this for real.

I propose Wednesday, February 29th. On that day, everyone in the world who is interested in participating will go without using iPods (or other music players with earphones) for one day. From the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep.

I picked that day for two reasons. One, I have a long train trip scheduled for that day. It’s sure to be a challenge for myself personally. Two, it’s February 29th, a leap year. There’s something symbolically interesting about making that the day without earphones.

If you’d like to participate, just don’t put earphones in your ears on that day. That’s it. If you want to help even more, you can share this blog post with your friends on Facebook or wherever.

Want to get an email reminder about No iPod Day? Enter your email below. I’ll only email you about No iPod Day. Promise.

I love to travel, and I’m not the only one. But why? What’s so great about travel anyway?

The first part of travel is the actual traveling. The actual moving from point A to point B. When people talk about loving to travel, I think they usually mean *being* in an unusual place, as opposed to *traveling to* (and from) another place.

The actual traveling itself can be a challenge. It can be frustrating to deal with schedules and delays. Not always, of course. You might decide to enjoy yourself on the journey, whatever may happen on the way. Or the journey itself might be the reward.

The other part of travel is the actual act of being in an unusual or unfamiliar place. What is so interesting about that?

You may be visiting a beautiful location — seeing something you can’t see at home. A beach, or a rain forest, or a snowy mountain, or a river. You may be visiting somewhere that’s a more comfortable temperature — somewhere warmer in winter, or colder in summer.

You may be exploring a different culture. A place that’s richer, or a place that’s poorer. Perhaps a place that has quite different cultural norms from what you’re accustomed to.

You may be going TO – to visit someone in their environment. You may simply be getting AWAY. Away from emails and phone calls, away from obligations.

What is the common thread running through all those experiences? I think it’s that traveling takes you out of your comfort zone. You experience different stimuli — sights, sounds, smells and tastes you wouldn’t normally be exposed to. The plugs are different there, the fire hydrants are yellow, people drive on the other side of the road.

These differences, whatever they are, large and small, cause you to stop and look around. Instead of ignoring what’s going on all around you, like you might do at home, you’re paying attention to the little details. Instead of worry about whatever you normally worry about, you’re actively taking in the scene, and you have less time to worry. You’re just enjoying life. Not necessarily because where you are visiting is *better* than home, but just because it’s different.

Do you really need to travel to have this kind of experience? With a bit of practice, I think you can elicit a similar experience at home, without traveling at all. Notice what’s going on around you in more detail than you usually would. Try not to get distracted in your own thoughts, and instead focus on the stimuli at hand, the things you have become accustomed to and have started to ignore.

I try to do that when I’m in my usual environment. Why not enjoy your normal space. Sometimes, though, it’s just plain fun to travel, and dive right into a new, unfamilar experience.

More:

• “4 Reasons traveling is a waste of time” by Penelope Trunk
• “How to Stay Calm While Traveling” on this blog

Last week the online world was ALL up in arms about the SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills that came close to passing in the US House and Senate. The bills would’ve given the US government new powers to block Americans from accessing copyright-infringing Websites.

Unfortunately the bills were written by lobbyists from the movie studios and record labels, and were full of holes and open to abuse. The technology world was not happy. Wikipedia blacked itself out in protest, and thousands of Websites joined in, including the front pages of Google, Wired, The Oatmeal, and even The Happy Grownup. Ultimately, Congress shelved the bills in response to the protests.

Surely, the fight is not over between Big Content and Big Technology. But until the legislators come up with a better system for combating egregious copyright abusers, is there anything we can do as individuals to help?

Yes there is. We should ask ourselves why we need to watch movies or listen to music SO BADLY that we feel compelled to go out and steal it in large quantities. Do we really want to be a nation/world of media junkies, mindlessly devouring content, needing a fix so desperately that we’re willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that we’re stealing (even if we’re stealing from rich Uncle Content)?

The key to stopping online piracy is not coming up with a better piece of legislation, but to look at ourselves. We need to find ways to enjoy life that don’t involve trolling the Internet for pirated entertainment.

With that in mind, here are 5 things you can do instead of stealing copyrighted content:

1. Create your own content. Create art. Maybe start a blog or, if you don’t want to write, start a YouTube channel.
2. Go for a walk.
3. Talk to your friends.
4. See your family.
5. Learn something. Read a book (just don’t pirate it). Check out a blog (maybe one that’s uncopyrighted).

These are just a few examples. The possibilities are endless.

Sometimes kids don’t want to help around the house with even the smallest request. A major fight will break out over something simple like asking them to put a sock away.

Other times they offer to help…with something dangerous. Or maybe they’ll offer to help with something and you know their “help” will actually be a real hindrance to getting done whatever you need to get done in a timely manner.

In general I find the best thing to do is have the kids help as much as possible. If you’re working on something that could be unsafe — say, using knives or cooking something on a hot stove — try to get them involved as much as you can safely manage. Mostly, kids are pretty careful. They have a decent sense of how to navigate the world safely.

I think as parents we often are overprotective of our kids. In the words of Peter Gray, “I doubt if there has ever been any human culture, anywhere, at any time, that underestimates children’s abilities more than we North Americans do today.” Ok then. That article I just linked to contains a fun tidbit about children on the Marquesan island of ‘Ua Pou, in the South Pacific. In that culture, the parents leave the kids alone all day. The kids sometimes find machetes lying around and manage to play with them without getting hurt. The parents don’t like this — not because they are worried the kids will get hurt, but because they are worried the kids will damage the machetes.

Meanwhile, it’s true that the kids, in their desire to “help”, might actually be more of a hindrance. Sometimes you kind of just want to get something DONE and you’re not feeling very patient. I think the best thing to do is just breathe, acknowledge the kids might damage the machetes, realize that you most likely don’t have to be in such a rush, and decide to enjoy the extra chaos and mess. Also, realize that the more you involve the kids in tasks around the house, the sooner they’ll learn to be self-sufficient.

What about the other side of the coin, when kids aren’t willing to help with chores at all? One thing I took away from reading Simplicity Parenting is the idea of having regular routines. For example, in our house, we do an end of day cleanup. We do it as a family, all working together, before the kids go to bed. We do this consistently every day. I think the kids respond well to this because it’s a regular event and because we do it all together. It still takes a fair amount of badgering to keep them helping. They tend to slack off or get distracted by the toys they’re putting away, which is only natural.

The other option we’ve tried is to make a particular chore the child’s responsibility. So for example, instead of all working on cleaning up, we’ll tell the kids it’s their responsibility to get the living room cleaned up on their own. The upside of this approach is the kids have a clear responsibility they can make wholly their own.  I perceive this approach to be more stressful though — I find it requires more badgering than doing things all together as a family.

Does anyone else have troubles with this or different approaches to consider?

The Oatmeal explains.