Happy See, Happy Do

She is in twelfth grade and must come up with a graduation project idea.

Her proposal is late.

Well, it’s not late late; she is certainly not in trouble for not turning it in yet.

It’s just that, well, she is barred from prom until she turns it in.

And the tickets deadline for prom has passed.

So she cannot go to prom.

To Senior Prom.

So she is not going to her senior prom.

Still, she must turn in a proposal and present her project before graduation.

Which is in...one month...maybe?

So she must come up with an idea.

So naturally she turns on Netflix to watch some TV.

The Secret is all the rage right now.

She read a while back that Taylor Swift also visualized her future in her teens, and now taylor swift is Taylor Swift.

She loves that the movie is discussing vision boards.

They are just a collage of everything you imagine you want in your future and you look at them everyday to imagine your future and then you get your future because you kept imagining your future.

But it’s so New Age.

So kooky.

So she will call it a dream board, not a vision board.

And she will put Jesus on it to make it okay.

Right in the middle of it.

Yes, that will make it okay.

So she proposes her dream board to the board.

And they say okay….

So she takes scissors to the gigantic stack of magazines that she shoved into the corner and forgot about, aka the location of the secret silverfish colony that is sometimes not so secret when they throw a surprise party for her in her bathtub.

It was 4PM.

Now it’s 2AM.

But it only felt like two hours!

Because she was having

SO

MUCH

FUN.

So she presents her project with flying colors and very little sleep.

And she passes.

Of course.

And they are all so happy for her.

Because she loved it.

And you could tell.

So she does it again.

And again.

Another dream board, née vision board.

Again.

A college identity project.

Again.

A mood board for a theater show concept.

AGAIN.

And it’s been seven years.

The Titanic boy is still on her first board with a giant engagement ring hanging around his neck.

She is still not married to him.

But he is married now.

So it does work.

But now she knows how it works.

Now she knows she should have put that picture of the Titanic boy next to a picture of herself with a giant engagement ring hanging around her own neck.

That way, next time, it would work right.

And that boy would be married to the right girl with the just-right lips, aka her, instead of to the girl with the too-big lips, aka his wife, who is not pretty even if everyone thinks the girl looks pretty in all the pictures.

And her office space is chock-full of stuff.

And she desperately needs more space.

But she can’t get rid of her magazines stacked haphazardly in the corner because she needs to keep cutting things so that the clippings that haven’t yet found their board homes are piling up in the corner, too.

And on the stairs.

And on her desk.

And under her desk.

And in her purses in the closet that she only looks at once every three years.

And she can’t stop cutting things because they are all things to want.

And there are so many things she wants.

So she keeps clipping, clipping, collecting.

And she doesn’t stop.

Because she loves it.

Because it makes her happy.

Because it can create her future.

And she can make her future...happy.