FAQs with The Smile Project on Our 16th Anniversary

Why November 9th?

So, there was no plan for it to be November 9… or to begin recording daily joy at all. I was driving home from high school down the same back country roads I’ve ridden on my entire life and it was unseasonably warm for November in Western Pennsylvania. I had my windows down and my radio up. I can still tell you the exact turn on the exact road where I had this crystal clear thought: “Day 1: Happiness is.. those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs.” And immediately that thought was followed by “oh that’s not how people think.” Normally it would just be like, “Oh this is nice; what a fun drive; I love this song.’” But instead it was a very clear “day one.” And so, that was on November 9. I went home. I posted it on social media. I wrote it in a notebook. And that’s how we began. No real plan, just happened to be November 9.

Why did you write it down?

Because I’m a little documentarian at heart. I like recording things. I like simple little traditions. I like lists and data and I think somewhere in my brain, I knew I had a good idea here.

Have you ever missed a day?

I have not.

What’s the closest you’ve ever been to missing?

I’ve been close many, many times. Especially in the early days before I had a smart phone which is the first several years of recording. The most memorable one to me, though, was one night in college where a group of friends and I had gone out for dinner and were driving back when we realized it was quite late. None of us must have had a smartphone at the time (or else, surely I would have logged in from there) so we were methodically planning out the assembly line of getting back to the dorm. Get the keys out. Get ready to start up the laptop. Do you know what you’re going to write? It was frenetic and beautiful and I will never forget how special that felt to have my friends taking it so seriously with me. And that was early days too!

Do you ever repeat them?

No. Not verbatim. And I do sometimes double check in the database if I feel like what I’m saying sounds too close to something I’ve said before. I will double check some key words. I’ve definitely made lots of posts about family and friends and dogs and the weather and running and things that are important to me but I tend to really be specific with ”Happiness is” and so that kind of immediately stops there from being verbatim repeats. Also, you’ll notice the earlier days of “Happiness is” tend to be sometimes more generic or shorter or it will be a one word thing and now they’re longer and more specific just to give more detail and variety.

Have you ever not wanted to post?

Oh so many times. Especially at the beginning. Sometimes it would even just get to be late at night and I would be tired and it would feel like a nuisance. But every time, I would find something or think of something and just say “okay… one more day.” And “one more day” quickly spiralled into 15 years. I think it’s important to note that the days in which I didn’t want to post slowly started to stretch out. It would be a couple weeks between not wanting to… then a couple months… then it would be a year since I last thought about giving it up. Now, the idea of not posting is unfathomable. Even on my worst days.

What does posting “Happiness is” do for you?

It is the single most grounding thing I have ever done in my entire life. It’s also the thing that has been with me the longest. I started this when I was a 17-year-old high school senior who lived in Western Pennsylvania with my parents. I worked part time at the Mexican restaurant in town and was dating the boy that sat next to me in band. Fifteen years later, every single aspect of my life looks different.

But it also looked different even in those first few years. My entire adult life is recorded in daily joy. Every city I’ve lived in, every job I’ve worked, every person I’ve dated, every apartment I’ve called home. There’s so much change that happens in any 15 year block but especially in that transition from teenager to adult, this is the one thing that has been so consistent. And so sure, maybe at times things with my housing or my career or my relationship was unsteady… but I still had this very steady and consistent thing to ground me.

If everything else feels chaotic in my life, there is one thing that will be there no matter what. I think that’s been really good for me and it shows me that even on my worst days, I have done one thing that is moving me closer to the person I want to be.

Even on the worst of absolute worst days… if all I do in a day is write a “Happiness is,” that is a successful day.

Did you plan to go for this long?

I think I figured I would stop when I ran out of things to say. I haven’t yet.