Self-help

My goodness, what an evocative term. It is a word that is just full of potential. It's up there with "Home-made chocolate". "Naked Male Models" and world peace. I went to my happy place today (well one of them anyway) I went to the book store. Now, I love looking at the new and hot fiction, I love looking at the cook-books, I love looking at the snazzy stationary that I AM NOT ALLOWED TO BUY UNTIL I USE ALL MY OTHER NOTEBOOKS, NOT EVEN IF ITS SUPER PRETTY.

Whew.

I also, (I confess) have a weakness for the self-help section. Why? Who knows, I'm sure its connected with my deep-lying perfecionist tendancies which are my main barriers against success and happiness. I'm sure it also has something to do with my love of books and my general admiration for the Published. My admiration is child-like and naive considering how many truly shitty books there are out there, nonetheless I continue to assume that if someone is smart enough to write a book they absolutely must be smart enough to fix my life and all my stupid little anxieties and woes which, when added up are nearly crippling and are certainly suffocating (at times anyway).

So... I had an idea. There are quite a few famous blog projects out there (and quite a few obscure ones I'm sure) Living Oprah comes to mind, the premise being that the author spent an entire year following Oprah's advice on everyone of her shows. She did this I think mainly to hold Oprah accountable for her frequent contradictions and her encouragement of rampant counsumerism amongst her housewife devotees. Another one had to do with following magazine advice I believe, and the most famous of all has a movie based on it (Julie & Julia). So, here's my wild and weird and abstract thought. I am a rampant perfectionist who is absolutely immobilized by stupid little fears, if anyone could benifit from self-help it's me. The theory being that my problems are not so grave so as to require psychiatric help (though I do enjoy making use of the school's counselling centre occasionally) but nor are they so minimal that I can ignore them. In my own wildly biased and unprofessional assessment of myself, I think I am the perfect candidate. So what I'm thinking is 26 books over the course of a year (1 every 2 weeks) follow their advice to a T and hope for the best!

So, I need to decide a couple of things:

• How do I select the books? Alphabetically? At random? As around and see what other people have used?
• What constitutes as self-help? Is it purely psychological? What about "lifestyle" books that incorporate health and wellness as well?
• What about relationship and love advice? Or should it be purely me?

So what do you guys think? Fun project no? PLEASE let me know your thoughts (I've noticed a distinct lack of commenting going on these days, way too much lurking folks.)

Anyway, let me know loves!