Things to Be Happy About


2025 03 08    |    etc    no date    2024 +    2025    entries    home

Things to Be Happy About journal

I can't remember when I started keeping this list - maybe about a decade ago? It migrated to a notebook that started falling apart, then to a much nicer notebook that hasn't fallen apart yet, but has been prevented from doing so by some judicious application of decorative duct tape. It's grow by leaps over the years, as I've added things to it as they came to me - things and people and lyrics and happenings and quotations and all manner of what brings a person joy. There's only one rule: no negatives. Nothing can be phrased in terms of something unpleasant. If it can't be said nicely, it doesn't go in the book.

There are hundreds of entries now, pages of it. Things like:

  • a good cup of tea
  • the patterns made on walls and pavement by the shadows of leaves in the sun
  • road trips
  • a good night's sleep
  • the company of friends
  • Lego
  • real maple syrup on your pancakes
  • finishing things up
  • starting new things
  • clean windows
  • warm sand
  • good lighting
  • hope
  • marathons of your favourite TV shows
  • taking pictures
  • postcards
  • corn chips
  • imaginary friends
  • crunchy peanut butter
  • the smell of fresh lemons
  • the silence of the world just after a nighttime snowfall
  • "And it's only the giving that makes you what you are" - Jethro Tull

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