Image courtesy of Pixabay

My lists have lists.

My house looks like an indoor tornado spun through.

A giant mound of storm debris is stacked by the curb in front of our house…the one I’d like to sell (there’s a pile of storm debris in front of my new house, too, but I don’t mind that as much since curb appeal isn’t currently an issue for that house.) And we’re not through cleaning up our yard.

My brain hurts from all the calculations of time, logistics, and money it’s been forced into making over the past few weeks. One day I was supposed to be in three places at once—until Hurricane Milton cancelled everything.

And how are you?

All this to say, I’m going to take a couple weeks off from posting on Catching Happiness, though  I’m still going to send out the Happy Little Things newsletter next week as planned (subscribe here). 

In the meantime, check out these posts from the past you might enjoy (do you sense a theme here?):

One Less Thing 

Dog Paddling in the Ocean 

Just (Don’t) Do It 

My front yard/driveway

My family and I are safe after Hurricane Milton passed through our area. Our current home wasn’t damaged, though we lost several trees including one that blocked our driveway when it fell (see photo above). As of this writing, we have no power or internet, and cell service is spotty. I’m able to post this because our new home didn’t lose power and I was able to drive over and connect to the internet there.

There were two huge trees down near our new house, too, one uprooted in the backyard and one snapped off at the end of our cul-de-sac. In just a 10-minute drive between the properties, I saw multiple downed trees, a river overflowing its banks, and streets and yards underwater. And we aren’t even in the hardest hit area, nor did we have a tornado touch down.

As uncomfortable, worried, and tired as we are (hurricane prep and aftermath is exhausting), we are safe. We’re sooo grateful the tree didn’t come down on our house, and that the pile of rubble by the road is only debris from the storm and not all our water-logged belongings. My father-in-law’s mobile home, by some miracle, sustained only minor damage.

As I’ve been telling people who’ve checked in on me, now it’s just problem solving.

Hope you had a much more uneventful week than I have!

If you want to help those who’ve been impacted by Hurricane Milton, click here. 

Photo by Master Filmmaker on Unsplash

I was already working on this post when Hurricane Helene swept through, and it feels a bit self-indulgent to talk about a “fun list” when so many have lost everything. I live far enough inland in central Florida that we were not hurt by Hurricane Helene’s pass. However, many areas in Tampa Bay and other parts of Florida, as well as Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, have been devastated. Businesses, homes, and entire towns have been wiped out. If you want to help hurricane survivors in the Tampa Bay area, visit Community Foundation Tampa Bay.  A quick Google search will give you a list of organizations helping survivors in other states.

Fall is usually my favorite time of year…mainly because it’s when we finally have our first cold front after months of oppressive heat and humidity and it becomes enjoyable to leave the house again. But this year, not only are we still waiting for the first hint of cooler weather, my life is currently consumed by home repairs and moving projects (Paint! Carpet! Oh, there’s structural damage, that will be $500 more dollars, please!). I’m not sure I have the time, energy (or money, see above-mentioned $500) to embrace a Fall Fun List. However, I’m stubbornly clinging to the belief that even if the weather doesn’t cooperate, and even if I feel overwhelmed, I will mark the season of fall in some way that is different than the (eternal) season of summer.  (This is an accurate description of Florida’s seasons and it cracked me up.)

I’m Fall-ing, even though central Florida is still Summer-ing. (I’m sorry. I’m really tired.)

So if you, like me, feel overwhelmed right now and unable to make the most of a Fall Fun List, here’s my scaled down Fall Fun List for the Overwhelmed. I’d like to do these, but if I don’t get around to them, I’m not going to stress about it.

Kathy’s Fall Fun List for the Overwhelmed

• Light a fall scented candle. Even the grocery store sells scented candles, so if you don’t have any already, it’s easy to buy one.
• Bake something fall-ish—I want to bake persimmon cookies. My mom used to make a version of these when I was a kid and they were delicious. I’m going to try this recipe. I like baking, so this isn’t a burden—if you don’t bake, there are plenty of bakeries where you can pick up a fall treat.
• Slurp at least one pumpkin spice latte or other fall-flavored beverage.
• Try pumpkin spice baked oatmeal. (Hmmm, I see a theme here…)
• Eat a few pomegranates.
• Attend the first productions of the 2024-2025 Straz Broadway Series. My friends and I have our tickets, so we just need to show up. 
• Choose and order a planner for 2025. I love the hoopla around planner season, and I have three months to made a decision.
• Seek out Fall-ish books and movies (any suggestions?).
• Add a few Fall decorating touches to my current home, and to the new home if we wind up moving before I would normally put up Christmas decorations (the beginning of December).

What’s on your Fall Fun List?

Click here to see last year’s Fall Fun List, here to see fellow Floridian Sarah Hart-Unger’s list, and here to see Laura’s Vanderkam’s much more Fall-ish Fun List.

Photo by Arthur Hinton on Unsplash

“Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future.”

—Daphne Rose Kingma

Our resident deer--something I will miss

As I mentioned in “Summer Fun List Review—How Did I Do?” we’re getting ready to sell our home of nearly 28 years and move to a much smaller townhome just a few minutes away. Because we’re downsizing by about 1,000 square feet, we’ll have to get rid of a considerable amount of furniture and other belongings. 

Decluttering has become my life.

Some decisions are obvious. We won’t have room for our dining room table, china hutch, and sideboard so they have to go. We won’t need many of our landscaping tools and equipment (the landscaping is taken care of by our new HOA association), and my home office will have to share space with the guest room, so I’ll need to sell or donate some of my office furniture (sob).

And so many books. Even though a home library is extremely important to me, I’ll be purging books as I pack. Which ones are worthy of moving with us?

Two questions

During the packing process, I’ve been asking myself two questions:

How much can I take?

And

How little do I need?

“How much can I take?” speaks to how I don’t want to feel I’m losing items that are special to me as we downsize. I don’t want to get rid of things I need and use, but I also don’t want to leave behind things that really give me a sense of comfort and home. The glider rocker I’ve had since before my son was born falls into this category. I really love that chair, and sit in it often, letting the rocking motion calm me when I’m stirred up emotionally. I’ve scribbled many first drafts on paper in that chair, pondered many a deep thought. I’m not sure I will be able to find a spot for it in our new home, but I really want to.

On the other hand, how little do I need? There is such freedom in having less. Less stuff to clean, store, maintain. It’s calming to look around a pared down space. I’m no minimalist, but I’m happy for this chance to see how shedding excess will simplify my life and allow space for more joy.

OK, one more question

Looking at all my stuff with fresh eyes, I’m also asking, “Am I keeping this just because I’ve had it so long, or because I still love and use it?” Our current home has a LOT of decorative shelving which we’ve filled with various trinkets and doo dads over the years. With a lot less room for trinkets and doo dads, only the ones I really love for themselves will be making the move.

Some hard choices are coming—there will probably not be room for everything I use and love, so even some favorites may have to be left behind. That will have to be OK.

It never hurts to look around and evaluate the things you live with. Eventually, we will probably all have to downsize, or leave it all for our kids to deal with, and from personal experience, I do not recommend this! It may not be easy, but asking these questions about our belongings, even if we’re not planning to move, can lead to more peace, freedom, and yes, happiness.

Have you thought about (or actually completed) decluttering or downsizing? Any tips you can share?

For inspiration, check out The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. And if you have the streaming service Peacock, I also recommend the TV show of the same name based on the book. 

*See what I did there? 😉😊

My jigsaw puzzle assistant

While the calendar says that the season is nearly over, I know that here in Florida we have many more days—months, probably—of “summer” left. But September is just a few days away, so I’m calling it on the Summer Fun List. Let’s see how I did! 

Summer fun list 2024

Rewatch the movie Clue. I enjoyed the stage production so much, I want to rewatch the movie. Done.

Beach weekend getaway with my husband. We tried, but nope.

Playdates with friends—as many can I manage! Whether it’s lunch, coffee, floating in the pool, or a trip to iSmash (see below), I plan to spend some quality time with friends this summer. Coffee, lunch, floating in the pool, thrifting, crafting—it was great!

Ride “Dougie” (fellow boarder’s horse I’ve been given permission to ride) while Tank enjoys his well-deserved retirement. Done.

Go to the movies—if I can find something I want to see. With my husband, with a friend, or even by myself. Twisters...dumb, but entertaining.

Complete at least one jigsaw puzzle. Done.

Watch the Summer Olympics being held in Paris (ah, Paris!) on TV. Done.

Make key lime ice cream. Bought the ingredients but never made the ice cream. I still hope to do it.

Go to iSmash—I have some frustrations I’d like to work out! Nope, and I’m losing interest in paying to smash things, as therapeutic as that sounds.

Watch Black Cake on Hulu. I loved the book. Done, and I loved the TV version, too.

Read by the pool. One way to enjoy the outdoors in a Florida summer is to get yourself wet. An afternoon spent reading and then dipping into the pool when I get hot sounds appealing. I usually prefer to skip the “wet” and “outside” parts of a reading afternoon, but I’m trying to shake up my routine a bit. Noooooo, who was I kidding?!

Create and read from a summer reading list (see below). Done.

Summer reading

Summer is prime reading time since I’ll be trying to stay cool. Here are some possibilities for my summer reading. Even though I’m a fast reader, there’s no way I’ll get to all of them. The ones with an * are priorities (completed titles in red):

Library books:

The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods (already on hold) 

The Husbands, Holly Gramazio (already on hold) 

*My Murder, Katie Williams 

*In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore 

Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price (In progress)

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler 

Enchantment, Katherine May 

*Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser. The Project Gutenberg e-book version is here. 

*Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan, Elaine M. Hayes 

TBR shelf:

*Au Revoir, Mary Moody 

*The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, Rumer Godden 

Touch Not the Cat, Mary Stewart 

Traveling While Married, Mary-Lou Weisman 

*Draft No. 4, John McPhee 

Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, Jennifer New 

August has been its usual difficult self. It’s been even more hot and humid than usual, Tank has been having a hard time with the heat, and as readers of the Happy Little Things newsletter know, we’re preparing to sell our house and move. Posting here on Catching Happiness may be erratic in the coming months, depending on what house-related shenanigans are taking place. I’m excited, but already feeling stressed and overwhelmed with the constantly growing list of tasks related to the move. I’ll do my best to continue to share simple pleasures and everyday adventures as we enter this new stage. Wish us luck! 

How was your summer?

What my windows looked like all week Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Greetings from waterlogged Florida. Even though Hurricane Debby made landfall well north of us, we’ve had nothing but rain, rain, and smothering humidity all week. Hat tip to Tampa Bay Times Columnist Stephanie Hayes for combining soggy with August to create Soggest…the best word I can think of to describe what it feels like here right now. 

But we have better things to do than complain about the weather, right? Right?!

Right. Here are some fun links to check out if your August is a Soggest, or if you simply want a break from real life.

The Frugal Girl’s “How to add more fun into your daily life (on a budget, of course)” lists both mindset shifts and practical tips for adding more inexpensive fun to our lives when it feels like all we do is grind. One of my favorites: the “pit stop of fun.” Plenty of these could be free, but last week I picked up a milkshake while I was out running errands and I brightened my day for less than $5. 

It will still be summer here until at least October, so I have plenty of time to enjoy these “99 Activities for Celebrating Summer.” I already regularly do some of these activities (enjoy seasonal fruit, grow potted herbs, work jigsaw puzzles), and I want to do a few more (plan a weekend escape to the beach, watch a sunset…preferably at the beach, make ice cream). Which ones would you like to try? 

Tired of pursuing happiness? Maybe it’s time to “Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder.” Monica Parker, author of The Power of Wonder, compares the feeling of wonder to watching a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis. “It is beautiful, complex, and even a little scary. This profound mix of awe, curiosity, and fear, is something that, when achieved, can expand our resilience and deepen our interpretation of the world around us.” 

Here’s another article related to increasing positive emotion by accessing awe: “The surprising benefits of ‘awe walks’ for your health and well-being.”

If you were as enchanted as I was by American gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, the “Clark Kent of gymnastics,” here’s a fun interview with him. 

I found “The Haunting Mystery of Artist Laura Perea…” fascinating. 

I can’t wait to see Wicked on the big screen! Here’s the official trailer:

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Recently I’ve come across a concept in the decluttering/home organization world known as “hushing” your house. Author Myquillyn Smith wrote about it in “House Hushing & Why You Need It”:

“To Hush your House, begin with just one room and 24 hours.

“You’re gonna find a place in another room to act as a temporary, 24[-]hour holding space…. Then you simply remove all the smalls, gee-gaw[s], tchotchkes and decor and stash it in your holding area. It’s like a cleanse for your surfaces. A home reset. And the best part is you experience no decision fatigue because you are not making decisions. You’re just temporarily moving stuff out. 

“Once you hush a room in your house, you can see it with fresh eyes. It’s so easy to become house-blind to all the visual stuff we see daily. With a hushed and quiet room, you get to experience a sense of peace in a matter of minutes.

“I always like to wait 24 hours before I bring anything back in so I can fully experience the room with less. It’s a great feeling and once you live in your hushed, quieted room for a day, you’ll start to feel how wonderful it is and you’ll want to protect that feeling.”

I’m intrigued by this idea for decluttering, but I’m also thinking about what it would be like to “hush” my life in general. In other words, could I remove everything from an area of my life for a set period of time, and then thoughtfully add back in what was truly necessary and desirable? In the rush of life, how much of what I do is truly necessary, and how much could I let go of to make room for more peace and happiness?

Since hushing is temporary, I could:

• Stop reading or listening to the news
• Stay off social media
• Choose to buy nothing
• Stop watching TV
• Stay home instead of go out
• Close my computer and stay off the internet
• Skip running errands

Twenty-four hours might not be enough time for hushing my life—I might want to do it for 48 hours, or even longer. However, this isn’t an exercise in deprivation. It’s an experiment to see if removing some things results in a more peaceful, happier life. It’s a way to see if something is bringing me joy, or bringing me down. It’s a way to get a little distance and perspective on things I might normally do on auto pilot.

I think I’m going to try hushing some things in August. How about you? Is there anything in your life you’d like to hush?

Image by Monika from Pixabay

Today’s post is a poem written by Marilyn Kallet of Tennessee, courtesy of American Life in Poetry. I was looking for something with a summer feel, and this fit the bill. 

Fireflies

In the dry summer field at nightfall,

fireflies rise like sparks.

Imagine the presence of ghosts

flickering, the ghosts of young friends,

your father nearest in the distance.

This time they carry no sorrow,

no remorse, their presence is so light.

Childhood comes to you,

memories of your street in lamplight,

holding those last moments before bed,

capturing lightning-bugs,

with a blossom of the hand

letting them go. Lightness returns,

an airy motion over the ground

you remember from Ring Around the Rosie.

If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies

again, not part of your stories,

as unaware of you as sleep, being

beautiful and quiet all around you.

Most recent completed puzzle

I just finished another jigsaw puzzle. It took me a couple of weeks of relaxed attention, and while there were moments when I had to work a little harder to proceed, finishing it was easy. I never had to schedule time or give myself a pep talk. I naturally gravitated to it, and spent time working on it most days, enough that I was able to finish it relatively quickly.

If I have time to do a jigsaw puzzle, why don’t I “have time” to do other things I say I want to do, like return to sketching/art journaling or watching the dog training videos of my course so I can work with Luna?

Why are some things so easy to do while I struggle with others? Clearly, time is not the issue. How “hard” something feels is—how much mental energy I have to summon to Do the Thing.

During this year of building a life I want, I’m going to explore a few of what I’m calling “building blocks.” In this post, I’m going to talk about “making it easier.”

When we try something new or we want to establish a new habit, we need to make it as easy as possible. Don’t set up roadblocks for ourselves when we could make our way clear. We don’t put obstacles in the way of babies learning to walk, do we? Maybe we should treat ourselves like babies! 

As Gretchen Rubin says in “The 21 Strategies for Habit Formation”: “To a truly remarkable extent, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient, and less likely if it’s not. The amount of effort, time, or decision-making required by an action has a huge influence on our habits. Make it easy to do right and hard to go wrong.” 

My puzzle was easy to do not just because it was fun, but because it was visible and readily available each time I had a few spare moments to do it. I didn’t have to find it, or unpack it, or anything like that.

I started thinking about different ways I can make it easier to spend time doing the things I want to do, without falling into the default of flopping on the couch or scrolling on my phone. My goal is to, as Leo Babauta writes, “Make it so easy you can’t say no.” 

Here are a few ideas for making it easier I’m experimenting with:  

Create a kit. A kit is a collection of items you need to accomplish a certain task. One kit I use all the time is a tote to carry the tools I need to groom Tank. It contains a hoof pick, curry comb, brushes, and other basic items I’m likely to need every time I groom him. I’m going to make an art journaling kit with some of my art supplies so that I’m not faced with the entirety of my (unorganized) stash every time I feel like playing in my journal. That’s just too overwhelming. Sitting down with a limited number of curated supplies is a lot easier.

Stack the habit. Just as I get dressed after I take a shower, I can piggyback a new activity on top of an established one: “After I do X, I do Y.” An idea here could be, “After I eat lunch, I watch a dog training course video.” I usually check email after lunch, but I could easily slip the dog training video in between eating and email. The videos are short, and won’t take much time away from the activities I have planned in the afternoon.

Use a timer. If there’s something I want to do but I’m feeling resistant to, setting a timer for a short amount of time often gets me through that roadblock: 15 minutes of decluttering and I can stop; do my weight training routine for 30 minutes and I’m done. There’s something about knowing we have a finite, and often short, period of time to do an activity that makes it easier to get started. And getting started is often the hardest part. 

Pair with pleasure. If there’s something I don’t want to do, or I find hard to do, I pair it with a simple pleasure. A delicious cup of something to drink, music or an inspiring podcast, sitting by a sunny window. Sometimes that little bit of pleasure is enough to convince me to start.

These are just a few ways to make establishing a new habit or adding a new activity to your schedule easier, and making it easier is just the first of my building blocks for building a satisfying life. More to come!

What’s your favorite way to make it easier? If you have more strategies, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below, or email me at kathyjohn335[at]gmail[dot]com.

Photo by Isabela Kronemberger on Unsplash

The year is halfway done. How’s it going so far?

Overall, 2024 is a much better year for me than 2023. (It could hardly be worse…and that is NOT a challenge to the Universe.) But I do still feel like I’m finding my feet again. Aside from healing from grief, I’m also figuring out what to do next with my time since my caregiving duties are done. I’d let my freelancing work slide because of the uncertainty around Carol’s condition, and now that I have control of my time back, I honestly don’t know if I want to go back to how I was working before. I also don’t know what else I would do! It’s a problem I’m still mulling over.

So 2024 is sort of a rebuilding year. Part healing, part restoration, part figuring out what I want for the future, regarding my purpose and how I contribute to our family through unpaid labor and income. I chose a word of the year (build) that I thought would help guide my life back into a shape I could love. And I set a few goals that I thought would get me back into the habit of accomplishment, not just survival.

In February, I did a quick goal check-in here on Catching Happiness, mentioning my three top goals for the year:

Write a draft of a book I’ve been thinking about for years.

Declutter (to some extent) my whole house.

Complete an online dog training course and train my dog, Luna.

How am I doing?

Succeeding and…

The only goal I’m making consistent progress with is decluttering my house. In fact, I’m almost done! I have just two rooms and my storage area in the garage left, and I also need to spend some time revisiting areas that have “magically” become cluttered again. I should be able to finish by September at the latest, giving myself extra time because of the energy-drain I always feel in summertime.

Failing better?

The other two goals? Though I haven’t done as much as I wanted to, I have done some, and I haven’t given up. I’ve continued trying, even though it’s in fits and starts. Maybe I’m failing better?

Book writing and dog training, are both new-to-me activities. I’m bad at them. I’m uncomfortable doing them. I have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable as I give myself time to get better. Both the dog training and book writing goals need and deserve deliberately scheduled time, and I haven’t been good at this. I frequently let the time I have available dribble away on other pursuits. Even when I write these goals as to-dos in my daily planner, I still blow them off all too often. I am not giving up, though. I’ll keep trying different strategies at least until the end of 2024.

The good news is…I can keep working on these goals, and I have six more months of 2024 to achieve them!

Beyond the goals list

When we evaluate the first half of our year, we should remember to look at more than just how we’re doing on our stated goals. How are we doing physically, mentally, emotionally? Are we having fun? How are our relationships faring? What unexpected events have challenged us? A happy life is more than just a series of goals checked off a list, though setting and achieving goals is one aspect of a well-rounded life.

When I reflect on the first six months of 2024, I realize that my emotions have mostly leveled out and I’m not falling prey to as many down days as I was at the beginning of the year. The emotional turmoil has settled down. Tank is doing great. I’m getting together with friends, reading good books, planning a weekend at the beach with my husband. I feel energy returning, and I find myself feeling grateful more often without having to force myself to look for the good.

And on we go into the second half of 2024!

What has 2024 held for you so far? We’d love to hear about your accomplishments, challenges, dreams—and anything else you’d like to share—in the comments section below!

More on the mid-year check-in:

Mid-Year Goal Planner Check-In: Goal Setting Mindmaps, Resets, And More! 

Best Laid Plans podcast: Happy Mid Year!

*Title stolen from Sarah Hart-Unger’s July newsletter! 

“The answer isn’t to just ‘live in the present.’ That’s too passive. The answer is, actually, to powerfully engage with and create, constantly, the present moment. I remember in 2021 I used to make everything into a ritual. If I had to vacuum, I’d first put on my favorite playlist and dance while I did it. I would light candles before I wrote, like a sacred moment of calm. I acted on my intuition, never saving an idea for ‘later’ because what was ‘later’? Time became nothing but a construct to me. There was only the right here, the right now, and if I didn't figure out how to make that moment as beautiful as I could, what did I have? Nothing mattered more than the present.”

—Jamie Varon

Photo by kike vega on Unsplash

Last week during yoga practice, our teacher, Terry, started us out with an affirmation that used the term “practicing happiness”—and it captured my attention. Despite all my years of thinking and writing about happiness, I’ve never really thought of it in terms of “practicing” happiness or having a “happiness practice.” 

What does practicing happiness mean?

The word practice is both a verb: “to do or perform often, customarily, or habitually,” and a noun: “a repeated or customary action.” 

Using the verb definition, I thought about what practicing happiness would look like. The way you get better at something is by doing it. Therefore, happiness can be something you do, like practicing kindness, or practicing yoga.

Here are some things to think about if you want to practice happiness—and get better at it!

Define what makes you happy. Do you know? It’s not always what you think! I’ve written before about three forms of happiness—momentary pleasure, overall happiness, long-term contentment. Think about what you need to be happy in these three ways. 

Seek out “happiness streams.” Don’t leave your happiness to chance. 

Deliberately look for ways to add fun to your life. Summertime with its more relaxed vibe is a good time for most people to add a little fun to their lives. 

Keep trying. Maybe something you thought would make you happy doesn’t. Don’t give up if you’re disappointed. Maybe you’re simply worn out and don’t want to add one more thing to your mental to-do list, even if it’s happiness related. Rest, then try again later.

(If you need some ideas, see “7 Things You Can Do to Feel Happier.”) 

What gets in the way?

Practicing happiness sounds pretty good, but plenty of things can get in the way. Some things that stop us from practicing happiness include:

• Neglecting your own needs and wants in favor of others
• Feeling guilty for enjoying yourself or being happy when others are not
• Waiting for permission
• Waiting to be invited
• Work and responsibility
• Apathy/low energy
• Grief/sadness

Happiness busters will always be with us, unfortunately. All we can do is keep at it. Even when times are hard, we can still find moments of joy. Ask for help when we need it. Allow negative feelings to pass through us. If happiness is important to you, do not give up seeking it.

Your happiness practice

It may seem like semantics, but if you practice happiness on a regular basis—not just now and then—you create a happiness practice (see the noun definition above). I think of it is as being similar to how I’ve been taught to practice yoga. It’s OK to be imperfect. Each day is a little different. What feels good and right? How can you stretch yourself while still listening to your body (yourself)? Just like a yogi comes back to the mat, you can come back to the practice of happiness whenever you want.

Day 2

This week I went to the beach for a couple of days to visit some family members who had rented a condo there. And guess what? When I got there, it rained. All day. After months of drought. Oh, well. That’s what books, games, movies, and the Internet are for. (And the sun came out the second day—yay!)

If you’re stuck inside because it’s too hot, too wet, or otherwise too unpleasant to be outside, here are a few links for you to check out.

Need ideas for your Summer Fun List? Gretchen Rubin’s Happier app has a new “Spin the Wheel” option which “will suggest something to add to your summer bucket list, an idea to spark a new tradition, or an activity that will help the season feel distinct.” As she writes, “If every month is exactly like the month before, time speeds up and blurs—so by doing lots of summery activities, we’ll make that part of the year stand out.”  

I love this—a baguette-scented, scratch-and-sniff stamp!  

Sometimes I feel more tired than I think I have any reason to be—maybe it’s because I’m doing some of these things? 

A Sunday reset that could be just the thing we need to get our weeks off to a peaceful start. 

Style blogger Alison Gary writes about the disturbing way Google has been leaning into AI to provide answers to search questions. How does this affect you? This practice influences traffic to websites and blogs like Gary’s, which impacts revenue for those bloggers, which means they struggle to bring in enough money to continue their work. It also helps determine the information you find when you have a question—and sometimes that information is flat-out wrong.

Gary suggests several ways to help any sites you care about (like Catching Happiness, perhaps?), including sharing articles on Facebook, Reddit, Threads, and/or Pinterest; following creators on our social platforms; subscribing to our newsletters, opening them and clicking on links; and leaving comments.

On a happier note, check out “The Vorfreude Secret: 30 Zero-effort Ways to Fill YourLife with Joy.”  

This song is just sassy and fun: 

Have a fantastic weekend!

Photo by john labelette on Unsplash

Many people love summer and look forward to its simple pleasures and everyday adventures. 

Not me. 

Florida’s summers are a special kind of hell and my goal every year is to survive the summer without 1) Heat stroke 2) A full-blown depression and 3) Hurricane damage.

I’m only half kidding.

I know you’re probably sick of my complaints about this—trust me, I’m sick of me, too. I’m trying to have a positive attitude, but we’ve already had multiple days in the upper 90s and, oh yeah, it technically isn’t even summer yet. I shudder to think what August will bring.

Since summer in Florida is Not My Favorite, in recent years I’ve been taking a cue from author Laura Vanderkam and creating a Summer Fun List. Having something to look forward to is a component of happiness that I fully believe in. So here goes…

Summer fun list 2024

Rewatch the movie Clue. I enjoyed the stage production so much, I want to rewatch the movie. 

Beach weekend getaway with my husband.

Playdates with friends—as many can I manage! Whether it’s lunch, coffee, floating in the pool, or a trip to iSmash (see below), I plan to spend some quality time with friends this summer.

Ride “Dougie” (fellow boarder’s horse I’ve been given permission to ride) while Tank enjoys his well-deserved retirement.

Go to the movies—if I can find something I want to see. With my husband, with a friend, or even by myself.

Complete at least one jigsaw puzzle.

Watch the Summer Olympics being held in Paris (ah, Paris!) on TV.

Make key lime ice cream.

Go to iSmash—I have some frustrations I’d like to work out! 

Watch Black Cake on Hulu. I loved the book. 

Read by the pool. One way to enjoy the outdoors in a Florida summer is to get yourself wet. An afternoon spent reading and then dipping into the pool when I get hot sounds appealing. I usually prefer to skip the “wet” and “outside” parts of a reading afternoon, but I’m trying to shake up my routine a bit.

Create and read from a summer reading list (see below).

I don’t feel like these are very exciting, or even very different from past summers, but maybe “excitement” isn’t what I need during the summer. I think I need to chill…in more ways than one!

Summer reading

Summer is prime reading time since I’ll be trying to stay cool. Here are some possibilities for my summer reading. Even though I’m a fast reader, there’s no way I’ll get to all of them. The ones with an * are priorities:

Library books:

The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods (already on hold) 

The Husbands, Holly Gramazio (already on hold) 

*My Murder, Katie Williams 

*In Praise of Slowness, Carl Honore 

Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler 

Enchantment, Katherine May 

*Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser. The Project Gutenberg e-book version is here. 

*Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan, Elaine M. Hayes 

TBR shelf:

*Au Revoir, Mary Moody 

*The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, Rumer Godden 

Touch Not the Cat, Mary Stewart 

Traveling While Married, Mary-Lou Weisman 

*Draft No. 4, John McPhee 

Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, Jennifer New 

I’ll also continue my Agatha in Order project. Begun in 2020, I’m still reading Agatha in order. As of this writing, I have 21 books left. I won’t finish in 2024, but will definitely get there in 2025. 

Do you make a Summer Fun List? What are your plans for fun this summer?

Gelato is delightful

Looking for delight is harder than you might think.

For one thing, I had to decide what a delight actually was. The dictionary defines it as an extreme pleasure or satisfaction, a joy. In my mind, it’s different from a simple pleasure—it has to cause a certain type of feeling, a sudden lifting of my spirits. Honestly, this doesn’t happen every day. Even though I tried to look for delights every day, I didn’t actually succeed in finding them as often as I’d hoped or expected to.

There are likely several reasons for this. Awareness is one of them—in the bustling round of daily life, far too often I operate on auto-pilot, not noticing all the delights around me, just trying to get through the day’s to-do list. I also think that the dumpster fire of the past few years has had a numbing effect on my ability to notice joyful things. I’ve developed a shield to protect my emotions from being triggered. While that’s helped me cope through stress and sadness, it’s also numbed my ability to feel delight.

I chose to take pictures of my daily delights, and that added another level of difficulty. A couple of times, I wasn’t able to snap a photo of things that delighted me (a tiny green frog in our mailbox, a cardinal taking a bath in the birdbath).

What I did find and post about (full posts on Instagram and Facebook):

• The sweet ritual I have with my dog when I come home
• The growth of a pineapple on our lanai
• Choosing a new novel to read
• Watching Tank run around like a youngster after his bath
• Rewatching a favorite TV show (Brooklyn 99)
• Our gardenia bush blooming
• Picking up library holds
• Eating at a fancy steakhouse, using a gift card from our son
• A backyard full of butterflies
• Beating the squirrels to ripe tomatoes
• Eating dessert first
• The gift of a framed cross stitch project

Photo by Tim Goedhart on Unsplash

No doubt the world can be a scary place. There are legitimate dangers out there, threats to life, health, and sanity.

But.

Every day I see headlines that use fear in order to get me to read on. Even perfectly innocuous information gets presented as if Something Very Bad is going to happen if I don’t read and heed. Nuance is lost. This barrage of fear-mongering produces in me a near-constant, low-level anxiety. I’ve noticed that I often feel physical symptoms of anxiety, like the clenching of my stomach muscles, a feeling of heaviness, even a tingly adrenaline reaction. I also often have a mental feeling of dread.

What I’m talking about here is not the very real and serious actual news regarding human beings who are living through war, natural disasters, or other terrible circumstances. What I’m talking about is the use of fear to attract attention to everyday matters. We are being made to be afraid of things we don’t need to be afraid of.

Why so much fear-mongering?

There’s a saying in journalism, “If it bleeds, it leads.” In other words, the more sensational (and scary) a story, the more prominent its place. Today we also have “click bait”—outrageous headlines intended to collect as many mouse clicks as possible. Add to that the algorithms of social media and other websites that continually offer up similar content to what we’ve already clicked on, distorting the reality of a situation or topic.

You could be excused for believing the world is simply horrible in every way.

One reason fear-mongering is so common is the sheer amount of content we see every day. Without fear, a topic/brand/story could get lost in the noise. Scary headlines say, “Hey, look at me!”  or, more commonly, “Hey, buy my products!”

We can fall for this tactic because we want to be in the know. We want to do what’s “right,” or we want to be “better safe than sorry.”

Antidotes to anxiety

I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of feeling anxious all the time. Here are some things I do to protect my mental state. (This is what I do; I’m not saying it’s right, or even right for anyone else.)

My first step is to reduce and curate my consumption of content, news, and headlines. This includes my phone’s news feed and my Instagram account. I read one local newspaper, subscribe to a news aggregator email (which gives me the option to skim headlines or dig deeper), and avoid news on TV. I also try to avoid the most sensational headlines and stories, and choose a few trusted sources of information to check in with.

Get offline and be with real people. Talk to them about their lives and activities. I am an introvert, so too much “people-ing” stresses me out, but I’ve found that having a conversation with a friend, or even just chatting with a random stranger often soothes my fears about how awful everything is. People are interesting, and at least 99 percent of the people I interact with are decent, not jerks.

Reframe a seemingly bad situation in a positive way. This is my super power and something I naturally do. I always try to focus on the best parts of a bad situation.

Stay in the present moment, rather than worry about what might happen. Truly pay attention, using all my senses.

Think over and record things that happen or things I notice, whether through journaling, or my Daily Delight Project. This helps remind me of the variety of human experience. A bonus is looking back over past journal entries—I’ve survived all the ups and downs of my life so far! 

Allow feelings to come and go without attaching to them. Rather than try to avoid fear and anxiety altogether, if I start to feel these feelings, I allow them in, notice them, and allow them to dissipate.

(Try to) freely admit that I don’t always fully understand something. I feel like this is true about more and more subjects all the time, and that concerns me. Until I remember that I don’t have to understand everything to behave according to two of my core values: kindness and curiosity. This relieves the pressure and anxiety of having to be “right.”

(Click here for additional ways to reduce anxiety and worry.) 

One of the challenges of 21^st century living is sifting through the huge amount of information thrust at us every day, much of it screaming in our faces. I hope these suggestions help you take control of the noise. Let me know in the comments what strategies you use to reduce fear and anxiety in your life.