A Journey in Search of Happiness

It was probably another drizzly, 40 degree day.  It's that kind of cold that doesn't sound impressive--I'm sure Minnesotans scoff at the idea of anyone called 40 degrees cold--but it seems to get under your skin.  A typical January or February day.  Have you ever heard of the "Seattle freeze"?  It has nothing to do with subzero temperatures as Seattle infrequently gets in the 30s, but it has to do with the fact that Seattleites are just kind of cold as a community.  We aren't friendly and there's probably a number of reasons to contribute to that, including the fact that when you're dealing with 4 months of 40 degree, drizzly, windy days, you don't really want to shout out a cheerful "What a wonderful day to be alive!!" to every stranger that passes by.

It's probably on one of those days that I started to really think about community here in the Northwest.  My job working door-to-door has me thinking a lot of life, love, and the universe.  Yes, it is true that people are pretty unfriendly here.  But is this everywhere?  Having just moved from a farm to live for the first time in the Seattle metro, I think a lot about rural communities and if they are happier than us city dwellers, fighting weekday traffic and busy mall parking lots.  What started out as culture shock has developed into a bigger questions:  Are we happy?  Who are the happiest people here in America?  What makes these groups more content than others?  And finally, as social media becomes a part of the majority of people's day-to-day lives, are social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, even Blogspot contributing to more happiness or is it really making us more miserable?

These questions have been nagging at me for so many months now that I am going to do something about it. So, 29 locations throughout the US have been selected randomly (map of these locations is to come later) and I've developed a couple sets of questionnaires to ask as many people as possible in each location.  I will go to people at their houses, at the grocery store, on the street corner.  All this information gets put into an excel spreadsheet.

The time in which I interview people in seven weeks over the summer.  For my trip I have a compact Toyota to live in, changes of clothes, a few loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter and cans of tuna. Despite being super low maintenance, I will still need funding and support from family, friends and hopefully even strangers.  For those of you who know me, I have traveled the country and the world and I've done it pretty much on my own.  But this will require some financial and emotional support as this will be a lot of work. Writing, inputting data into formulas, extracting and writing out interviews, blogging daily, etc.  To be perfectly honest, while the writing does sound pretty intimidating, being snubbed and yelled at by strangers--and I expect a lot of that--will probably be the most emotionally taxing.

Wish me luck on this!  I'll be blogging from every city I visit that has some sort of available internet source.  Having previously lived in my car for three months as a part of my mid-life crisis (at 22), I know what incredible experiences one can have and I'm thrilled to experience the eastern side of America and meet all the people that are bound to come across my path. 

Rest assured, I will be armed with my laptop, a audio recorder, and a camera.

My kickstarter.com account and more information about that will be up soon!  Thank you!