Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash

When I wrote “I’m not even going to try to guess what 2022 holds, but I am going to stay optimistic and open” in my first post of the year, I couldn’t have guessed what the year would hold, and I’m actually grateful for that!

We can never “know” what’s coming (though sometimes we can guess). All we can do is savor the happy times, and build a foundation of resilience and a network of support for the hard ones. To stay “optimistic and open,” even when it’s hard. (And forgive ourselves when we fail at that.)

We can also cling to practices which help us feel grounded and give a shape and structure to our lives. Today I’d like to share my mid (-ish) year review of my efforts to shape 2022 so far.

Word of the Year (WOTY)

With the unavoidable complications of caregiving, “simpler” has been a great focus word. Here are a few ways I’m applying the concept of simpler:

I’ve continued to declutter my house. I’ve been watching YouTube videos by The Minimal Mom to maintain motivation, and one of the concepts she’s brought to my attention is that it’s all about “inventory management.” How much “stuff” do you want to manage?  I’m not a minimalist, but I do find a less cluttered environment contributes to a calmer mind. 

I’ve stripped my writing down to the bare minimum. This isn’t my favorite practice, but right now it’s the right choice. I simply don’t have the emotional and mental bandwidth to write much. (Though if the right project or idea comes along, I’ll make an exception!)

I’m breaking tasks into smaller, simpler steps.  For example, we want to touch up the paint in our bedroom. My task for this week was “Find out if we have the paint we need or if we have to buy more.” (Note: This will take approximately three minutes…and yet, here it is Friday and I haven’t done it yet! Since it is such a small step, though, I will probably manage to do it. This is why I need to break things down into tiny steps.)

“22 in 22”

In January, I’d only put about 10 things on my “22 in 22” list; now I’m up to 19. My entries range in difficulty from “buy new pjs” to “West Coast visit with Mom, Shy, and Kerri.” I’ve accomplished nine of the 19 (including the two just mentioned), with another three in progress. Considering what 2022 has wrought, I’m pretty happy with this. And I still have almost half the year to go.

The Happiness Jar

Even though I forget some weeks, I’m still dropping slips of paper in the Happiness Jar on a regular basis. It looks like this now:

I’m adding a reminder to my informal weekly planning session so I don’t keep forgetting. This little project really does make me happy.

What else?

No surprise here, I’ve been reading a lot! Books old and new, from my TBR shelf and from the library. I’m still working through my personal reading project, “Agatha in Order” (reading Agatha Christie’s novels in the order they were published). I’ve also been listening to more audio books. (Is anyone interested in a reading round-up post?)

Tank is living his best life, roaming a 15-acre property with a “gang” of older geldings. I ride once a week on average, an easy hack around the property with the occasional trot thrown in (he’s in better shape than I am for this). The heat and humidity of the Florida summer preclude doing much more than that, even if we wanted to. 

Tank (in front) with best buddy Bubba

My sketching practice is still largely theoretical, though I did do two or three sketches while I was in California in June. One of the undone “22 in 22” entries.

Future plans

I’m keeping them simple(r). Continue to experiment with ways to make sketching a habit rather than an event. Continue to declutter. Continue to slow down and take it one day at a time. Work on those tiny steps.

Lessons learned

Or, rather, lessons I’m in the process of learning… Hard things get easier over time. Letting go of perfectionism is more important—and more complicated—than I thought. Don’t wait if there’s something you really want. You never know when something may happen that makes it impossible to go after your desires.

I hope the first half of 2022 has brought you both joy and challenge—and that you’re on your way to reaching your own most desired dreams for the year.

How has your year been so far? Do you have any plans for the last half of 2022?

Quick, tell me three happy things that happened this week. They can be small or large, they just have to be something you noticed and took pleasure in.

Surprisingly hard, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to remember the trauma, the disasters and catastrophes, than it is to remember the quiet little moments that actually make up most of our day-to-day lives. I wanted to change that for 2022, and one of my solutions is the Happiness Jar.

Happy little things

I can’t take credit for the Happiness Jar. The original concept, which I’ve seen attributed to author Elizabeth Gilbert, is to jot down one thing you’re happy about or grateful for every day and store it in a jar. At the end of the year, read all the good things that happened to you over the past 12 months.

I’m tweaking it a little. Instead of one thing every day, which seems overwhelming to me (and not simpler), I’m going with a minimum of one per week, with the option to put in more if I so choose. At the very least, I’ll have 52 slips of paper, and that’s a lot of happy little things! Since Jan. 1, there was one (rough) week where I had just one good thing to put in. But last week, I already had two by Wednesday. 

Focusing on recording the happy little things has made me start to look for things to write down, and to schedule things to look forward to. I think this is going to be the gentle nudge I needed to start planning a few more simple pleasures and everyday adventures.

Another great thing about this practice is the happy little things can be really little…and they can (and should) be things that you find happy/uplifting/funny/awesome/fill-in-the-blank. This is a personal practice, intended for your eyes only.

As Liz Gilbert wrote, “In fact, my happiest moment each day is usually just a glance of something sweet and small, an unexpected flush of emotion, a bit of sun on my face, a pleasant encounter on the sidewalk, a cool glass of water at just the right instant, the cat-like contentment after a nap, a glimpse of a bird just out of the corner of my eye, a recognition of some tiny lovely thing.”

I thought you might enjoy seeing this little project come together, so here are a few photos. You'll see I had a lot of “help.” I was lucky enough to have a bunch of cute papercrafts given to me by a friend that I could use to decorate my jar.  And to jot down my happy little things, I’m using pages from a mini notebook someone else gave me. So much happiness and affection in this one small package!

Started with a plain canning jar and a small notebook

Took the ribbon out of the cat’s mouth

The finished product