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!