Declare today "sacred timeoff limits to everyone, unless invited by you. Take care of your personal wants and needs. Say no, graciously but firmly, to others' demands."
You are not the product of your circumstances. You are a composite of all the things you believe, and all the places you believe you can go. Your past does not define you. You can step out of your history and create a new day for yourself. Even if the entire culture is saying, "You can't." Even if every single possible bad thing that can happen to you does. You can keep going forward.
When you run a race, you hurt your ability to compete when you turn your head to look at the competition chasing you, you lose a step physically and psychologically. Run the race always stretching to do your best, imitations will come in last, no one can catch an original.
Can I just tell you the truth? I get asked to do a lot of stuff. And all of the years that people have asked me to do things for the film festival, I couldn't. And so this year, I thought, "Oh, my god, I don't have a day job. If somebody ask me to do something, I'm going to do it."
Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.
The way to choose happiness is to follow what is right and real and the truth for you. You can never be happy living someone else's dream. Live your own. And you will for sure know the meaning of happiness.