Category: Life

Small Joys

Oops. Got caught up in some journaling, so I’m late on this one.

Today Holidailies says: Share your best advice for surviving the holiday season.

I’ve answered this last year, on December 3. My answer was to protect your peace, namely by saying no to things and people who disrupt it. You don’t have to do all of the things and you don’t have to see all of the people.

This year, I’m suggesting saying yes, but to the small joys that can still be found in an ever-demoralizing world. There’s a lot going on around the world, as there always is, with war, natural disasters, economic instability, and social upheaval. If you’re in the United States, 2025 has been a whammy of political insanity. For all intents and purposes, the country is collapsing under a regime led by a megalomaniac who has one foot in the grave and wants to ruin as much on his way out as he can. Wherever you turn, there’s bad news.

And yet, wherever you turn, there lies the opportunity for a small joy.

Fill a bird-feeder and watch our feathered friends flit around. Look at how the sun shines on their feathers, listen to their little chirps and songs.

Make a giant mug of hot chocolate. Dump in some marshmallows and top it off with whipped cream. Sit under a quilt, take a sip, and let the whipped cream dot the tip of your nose.

Listen to your favorite music. Play the same song over and over again as many times as you want. This song has 1,046,490,278 plays on Spotify. I think I’m responsible for those last 278 of them. The music sounds like we’re being flung out into some kind of giant cosmic nightclub. I love it.

Call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a long time. Let the friendship pick up like it was just yesterday. Listen to how happy they are to hear from you. You’ll hear it in their voice.

Sleep late. Like, really late. Past noon. Get up, have lunch. Then read a good book. If you need a nap, take a nap.

Put on something comfortable and stretch. Feel how everything extends and loosens up.

Hold the door open for someone else, just to do it.

Make a donation to your favorite charity.

Light your favorite candle.

Watch your favorite comedy. Or spooky movie. Or musical. Or drama.

Help your kids build a snowman.

Draw something fun on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk.

Play solitaire with real cards. Or have a game night with friends.

Stroll through a museum.

Get on the floor and romp around with your dog. Let your cat judge you both.

Take a hot bath with a million tea lights around you like they do in the movies.

Look up at the stars.

Scroll through your phone at pictures of the good times.

Go down a YouTube rabbithole of old commercials. Send the links to friends your age. Every time I see a montage of commercials from the 70s and 80s, it’s like I’m a kid again. “I had that! And that! Remember that?”

Buy something small on sale that you never tried before. I’ve discovered vanilla cream seltzer for 89 cents for a 33-ounce bottle, and the other day I managed to snag five of them for a dollar.

Small joys like that are sustainable. They’re what will get us all through both the season and whatever earthly turmoil surrounds us. Post ’em if you’ve got ’em. I’m always looking for fresh ideas.

A Christmas ornament in the shape of a snowman, with a small tag that says "joy."

Batty Boo!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again: Time for Horrordailies! This is the precursor to Holidailies, and while only a few of us have signed up for the spooky stuff, I’m looking forward to it. Check out my nifty bat tumbler:

It goes with my bat earrings, which have purple sparklies:

My plan for Horrodailies is to offer up a dark poem, likely a Haiku, with photos from photographers I think you need to see and, if they’re looking for work, hire.

Unfortunately, I got thrown off my plans already because of the not entirely unanticipated letter that was stuck to my door by my landlord tonight informing me that my lease will not be renewed when it’s up on December 31. It’s a long, ugly story, but the short version is that my apartment has had mold issues for three summers running and this summer they actually had to remove and replace panels from the ceiling and wall. So, rather than do what Virginia law requires of landlords who must do a mold remediation, which is put the tenant up in another unit or in a local hotel for up to 30 days at the landlord’s expense, they’re just not renewing my lease. This way they can take their understaffed crew their usual infernally long fix-it time to correct the moisture problem that’s causing it.

Am I sad? Not really. Not like I was about a month ago when it became apparent that I was going to have to move, either voluntarily or involuntarily. I’ve lost some minor property to mold here, things like a leather jacket that couldn’t be restored (that I didn’t wear anymore anyway because it doesn’t go with my vegetarianism), some old Salomon winter boots that were good up to -20 degrees F, and this summer, an ironing board.

But I also lost something VERY precious to me this summer, which was the box of birdie mementos from Inigo the Nanday and Jimmy the Green Cheek. I had cleaned Inigo’s wood perch after he passed, but one day this summer when I opened the closet in my home gym, I smelled something rank coming from the birdie box and it turned out that the perch was covered in green mold. All of the soft materials, like rope perches and palm and fabric toys, had spots. Then, when I opened the plastic baggies that held wooden toy parts, Jimmy’s old and smaller toys, and Inigo’s leftover popsicle sticks that he loved to chew so much when he was healthy, they all smelled of mold and mildew. I managed to save some of Inigo’s half-chewed toys, but the only toy Jimmy has now is one tiny blue wooden star with one tip chewed off that I put inside the little tin that holds his ashes.

To say I was devastated by this loss would be an understatement. And yet I am SO very grateful that last winter I decided to take the baggies of feathers from Inigo, Jimmy, Louise the Alexandrine (who lives my ex-husband), and an ex-boyfriend’s birds out of that closet and put them in one of my nightstands. The baggies are doubled and sealed well, and I believe my bedroom furniture is made with cedar, which is mold-resistant, so they’re safe.

At any rate, I knew this was coming and I cried my tears over it a month ago—enough so that the problems and annoyances I chose to overlook about the place are now on my last nerve. I even got annoyed that a seam on the light fixture in the dining room is where you can see it instead of facing a corner. I just didn’t expect to get this letter until Halloween, 60 days before the lease ends, but instead they gave it to me today. It threw me, even though I know it will work out in the end. New year, new apartment, and I’ll likely have to cheat on Holidailies and write a few in advance in December.

But first Horrordailies. Here’s an oldie but goodie vamp poem that I originally made with Magnetic Poetry online, titled “Velvet and Cake.”

More tomorrow, friends and fiends!

The Void Is So Full

The Milky Way Galaxy as seen from Earth at night.
Image: Graham Holtshausen on Unsplash

Is it really mid-May already? When last we left off, it was the end of February. So much for my New Year’s Resolution of maintaining this blog.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t write in an online journal in April at all, but to check in a couple of times. I took a month off from all of that, and writing in a paper journal, just to rest and see if I could regain some semblance of motivation for anything as things had become a relentless grind since January. Get up, log on, work, log off, eat, watch TV, sleep, rinse, repeat.

I’m still a bit stuck, but have concluded that I’m in that weird place Carl Jung talked about when he described how people lose motivation after their awakening, enantiodromia. I’ve stopped chasing, stopped worrying about to-do lists, stopped caring about hustle, proving myself, and achieving—all the things that keep Washington, the institution running—and now find myself thinking “How much of this really matters?”

Part of it is that I’ve made some time to refocus on Zen and Stoicism. The first “rule” of both of them is to concern yourself only with what you can control: your actions, reactions, thoughts, and perceptions. The second “rule” is to let go of what you cannot control, and oofta, there’s a LOT of stuff I cannot control, like other people’s behavior and reactions, the evil in the world, and what happens around me.

When I stopped to think of all the things I can’t control, I started bowing out.

I will not engage in political discussions beyond agreeing with strangers’ social media posts. Someone wants to think I’m wrong? Okay.

Someone didn’t respond to a text? Okay.

Someone doesn’t have time to get together? Okay.

Someone doesn’t want to reschedule after breaking plans? Okay.

Someone didn’t respond to an email or call at work? Okay.

Someone gets angry after asking me to do something for them and I set a boundary and say no? Okay.

Traffic? Okay.

Bad weather? Okay.

Number I didn’t want to see on the scale? Okay.

No one wants to join me in something I’m doing or going where I’m going? Okay.

I’m not chasing. I’m not forcing. I’m not striving to make any points, get people to agree, impress, perform, or bring people into my sphere who don’t want to be there. I welcome those who are with me, let go of those who aren’t.

At any rate, that’s why I haven’t been around. I’m in what the video below describes as the Hermit stage, the phase between death and rebirth, and it’s all swirling around with rising detachment in the Zen sense. But I’m still floundering around a bit. Although I’ve begun to say no to things that don’t resonate, I’m still learning to let go of wanting things to be the way I want them to be rather than how they are. I just have to trust the process.