Meet Skip & Bobbie Work | Happiness Philanthropists & PhD Student

Is there a person, group, organization, book, etc. that you want to dedicate your shout out to? Who else deserves a little credit and recognition in your story?

SONGWRITERS are the shining stars of my ABC’s of happiness website. They are freedom fighters who lead humankind into battle against grief every single day. Songwriters are humankind’s first & last line of defense against grief. They lead the charge of the writer’s brigade into the valley of the shadow of death to help Humankind win the war against grief and grief’s conscripts, human unkind, once & for all.

Without songwriters & music, my Happiness doctorate dissertation website would have no heart or soul.

The biggest challenge I faced when I started my happiness exploration was trying to figure out a way to bring my doctorate dissertation to life. I knew music was the answer. Thanks to Apple Music, the ABC’s of Happiness website includes links to carefully selected playlists for each & every stage of a Sensationally Happy Boot Camp & Emotionally Sad Boot Camp. I created these boot camps to help Humankind reignite our emotional arsenal to win the war against grief. One boot camp lets us know the enemy to defeat & escape the enemy. The other boot camp shows why happiness is worth fighting for, till death do us part.

But here is the thing. Any old song & dance would not do the trick. I needed honest-to-God lyrics that captured a specific human emotion during each stage of every level of grief & happiness. Whenever I think of honest-to-God lyrics I immediately think of country music.

In other words, I needed to find the perfect pitch of lyrics & songs that would allow humankind to SEE-READ-HEAR-FEEL-SENSE a specific human emotion. Songwriters gave me what I needed. I need to give them a shout out with my emotional gratitude. Songwriters are humankind’s black & white knights of the round table in this never-ending battle against grief.

While Nashvegas is indeed Music City, the heart & soul of the entire community belongs to the songwriters. Songwriters from all over the world flock to Nashville sharing their passion, love, sadness, happiness & most important, their empathy in the symphony of their emotional words & stories.

The hard part about really listening to the lyrics is FEELING the message in a bottle the songwriter is sharing with humanity. So many popular songs are about mama, trains, trucks, prison, getting’ drunk or being down on your luck. Some are gangster, vindictive, even cruel, and sweet revenge is always a best seller. Some songs you can dance to & fall in love with and others are filled with heartache & sadness beyond comprehension dedicated to those who have been ambushed & emotionally left for dead by grief. I had to listen to hundreds if not thousands of songs before I could find the 86 perfect pitch lyrics & musical heartbeats that captured a single emotion humankind shares with one another. 

Great songwriters spark the fires of empathy and ignite burning human emotions. Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” When we feel the pain of great song lyrics we weep with the songwriter & singer. When we feel the happiness of great song lyrics we rejoice with the songwriter & singer. I would go as far as to say, successful songwriters are the epitome of empathy.

When I needed a song to SEE-READ-HEAR-FEEL-SENSE the barely controllable emotion you feel when you chase an impossible dream and follow your “Passion,” I found Kacey Musgraves, Shane McAnally & Brandy Clark’s “Follow Your Arrow.” 

When I needed a song to SEE-READ-HEAR-FEEL-SENSE the thrill & excitement of what “Euphoria” feels like, Dierks Bentley, Deric J Ruttan, Brett Beavers gave me what I needed with “What was I Thinkin’.” 

When I needed a song that captured what it feels like to be sensationally in “Love” I locked into Troy Verges, Lori McKenna, and Hunter Hayes song “I Want Crazy.” 

My emotional work would have been so much easier if songs were listed by the specific human emotion the writer was trying to capture instead of being grouped by genre. When I was searching for the perfect lyrics for what it feels like to navigate through the 6 stages of Blindside Grief, I had to find songs that allowed Humankind to experience “what does it FEEL like when someone you loved & trusted with all your heart stabs you in the back.” 

To illustrate how hard it is to find the perfect combination of great song lyrics and just the right artist to capture the very intense emotion of “Melancholy” that comes with an “Et Tu Brute?” sneak attack better than anyone else, I present this example. A rock & roll songwriter named Trent Reznor who wrote the song “Hurt” that was a hit for the rock band Nine Inch Nails. The song received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Song in 1996. No question, the original song is a hit.

However, it was not until Johnny Cash covered the song before Trent’s message in a bottle made the cut for the ABC’s of Happiness soundtrack. If you ever get stabbed in the back by someone you loved & trusted I guarantee blindside grief victims will feel a whole lot worse than just feeling “Hurt.” They will feel completely battered & shattered. When you listen to Johnny Cash sing it, you will know exactly how intense the pain & suffering of betrayal FEELS.

When I needed a follow up song for the melancholy feeling of Judas Kiss, I found the perfect song to express the 5th Stage of Blindside Grief. I needed a song that would let humankind experience how devastating it feels in the aftermath of melancholy to feel utterly lost, alone & completely “Rudderless.” Dwight Yoakam saved the day with his powerful lyrics of a broken-hearted aimless drifter who FELT, “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere.” 

The hardest part of my musical research was finding the perfect “escape hatch” song for all six distinct levels of Grief prisons. The entire point of the grief emotional bootcamp was to show humankind what it feels like to break free & escape grief. In the 6 Stages of Blindside Grief case of escape, I needed the perfect lyrics/song so that blindside grief victims trapped in a prison of their own making who had been stabbed in the back could know & FEEL what they had to do to make their escape. As you might expect I uncovered Christian singer/songwriter, Matthew Joseph West, who came to my rescue with his picture-perfect rendition & testimony of feeling “Forgiveness.” 

I followed the emotional trail to great lyrics wherever it took me. When I needed a song for humankind to FEEL what it is like to be “Paralyzed” during the 5 Stages of Pure Evil Grief, like so many military veterans who return from war mentally scarred, broken, and traumatized, I discovered Nate Feuerstein (aka NF) & Thomas James Profitt’s Hip-Hop/Rap song of the same name. Try to imagine the courage it took to put these comatose feelings into words & present them in song so humankind would know exactly how it feels to be emotionally paralyzed. 

These examples show my musical research was not limited to country music. The heartbeat & soul of all music is driven by honest-to-God lyrics which is why country, Christian, R&B, Soul, & even Hip/Hop & Rap and all genres of music walk hand in hand when songwriters share their open & honest humankind emotions and document them.

While country music fans worship incredibly talented stars like Garth Brooks, my admiration & focus of attention goes out to the likes of Anthony Michael Arata. Tony was the solitary soul who sat in a room all by himself capturing the essence of feeling the incredible memories of still being head over heels in love with a love he lost. His painful rendition of, “I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance” is a ray of light in the deep dark world of devastating loss & grief.

Tony’s brokenhearted song lyrics embraced a critical component of the 6 Stages of Mourning Memories, or Mourning Sickness as I like to call it. He summarized his undying love perfectly in “The Dance”. Tony brought Alfred Lord Tennyson: “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” to life in lyric & Garth Brooks magically presented it in song.

 It makes perfect sense that two genres of music, Hip-Hop/Rap & Country Music, would both share the exact same title of “See You Again” in two unique songs written about Mourning Memories acceptance. DJ Frank E, Charlie Puth & Wiz Khalifa on the hip/hop side with Carrie Underwood, Hillary Lindsey & David Hodges on the countryside. Both wrote perfect lyrics for having the undying faith that they accepted the grief they suffered… knowing in their heart & soul… both would see the love they lost again in a better place and that this is not where it ends. 

Thankfully, to close out the 6 Stages of Mourning Memories, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin would be called upon by songwriters Burt Bacharach & Hal David to sing, “I Say a Little Prayer for You.” Together they helped me allow website viewers to SEE-READ-HEAR-FEEL-SENSE the perfect pitch ending to Mourning Memories using the incredible power of prayer.

These are the types of lyrical songs I endlessly searched for to amplify 86 emotions humankind shares when we are sad and when we are happy. It took years of musical research where I will never stop looking for emotional song lyrics & music to highlight what a single shared human emotion feels like. Great songwriters remind us we are never alone in how we feel. Songwriters are the glue that binds us all together and proves humankind thrives on our emotional connection.

It is fascinating when you dig deep into the lyrics of emotional songs. You get a feel for just how hard it is to capture openly & honestly what a particular human emotion FEELS like. When song lyrics are genuinely great, it connects humankind together with EMPATHY, so the listener ends the song knowing exactly how the songwriter felt. In the best-case scenario, a great song is a hit because it ignites human emotions. 

I mean look at me. I just met you, and this is crazy, but here is my number so “Call Me Maybe” if you do not believe me. Tell me these whacky song lyrics do not make you FEEL better.

Those who spend the time going through the ABC’s of Happiness website will quickly discover it is an emotional symphony of humankind’s grief & happiness. This website is musical therapy for humankind with a proven guidance system to sensational happiness thanks to songwriters. This is why I am so excited to give a shout out to my down-home Music City songwriters that connect with me through thick & thin. 

My goal for the ABC’s of Happiness is for humankind to graphically SEE the up & down road map of emotions we all share. I aimed for humankind to READ the detailed text & song lyrics before they HEAR the song, so they get a SENSE of what it FEELS like to be on the emotional Rollercoaster Ride of a human life. Thanks to songwriters I was able to accomplish my dream of humankind FEELING & SENSING every stage along the way. 

This website is proof positive that humankind weeps together & rejoices together. Our togetherness is all thanks to the one emotion humankind shares with one another called empathy. Human unkind, who lacks empathy, is the only exception to this empathetic humankind rule.

How did you get to where you are today professionally? Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you have learned along the way? What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?

I got to where I am today professionally thanks to the unalienable right to life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness given to every American. Life is easy when I feel happy & free. Life is hard when grief attacks & condemns me to a life sentence in a sad & lonely prison filled with anxiety & depression. This means the only challenge I have ever faced was learning how to escape grief’s six prisoner of war camps and then exercising my God-given right to chase another impossible dream. 

When you cut to the core of human emotions, happiness can easily be defined as, “The absence of grief.” This means to experience sensational happiness, having the fortitude & refusal to allow grief to lock you up in a solitary prison is the key to unlocking the many secrets of happiness. Ironically, this also means in the simplest of terms, grief can be defined as, “The absence of happiness.” 

The comfortably numb gray area that lies between happiness & grief is defined as, “The absence of human emotions.” These are the grief prisoners of war who surrender their human emotions to grief and shut down their emotions completely.

Let us just say after 5 magnificent years researching happiness in hamlets & towns across this beautiful country where alabaster cities gleam, and you get to SEE-HEAR-TOUCH-TASTE-SMELL-FEEL our purple mountain majesties, I was inspired to build a “R-O-C-K in the USA” doctorate dissertation website about happiness. The emotional musical soundtrack brings this website to life.

My brand is sensational happiness. My story is I want to be the first of my kind to earn a PhD in Happiness. I am also in the Philanthropist business of working day & night to “Make Humankind Happy Again.”