01/31/2025: Happiness, Gratitude, and Broken Eggs

If I didn’t have any good things in my life, things would be pretty bleak right now. But at the start of a brand new day, I want to try to ignore the news and my anger and confusion and just think about the good stuff.

I’m feeling rightfully settled back into my routine, and with the tweaks I made it’s actually better than last year. I’ve been hard at work watching lectures and going to writing events, and I’ve been reading my butt off. I also entered another writing contest last week, and I’m eager to see how it goes. If anything, it was fun to write about something that I may not have considered writing about if the prompt and subject weren’t given to me. It made the writing process surprising and so much fun. 

Within the last week or so, I got some unexpected positive feedback for my story judging I’ve been doing, which felt nice. Caleb and I have successfully brought back weekly date night, and I enjoyed Chipotle and watching Cloud Atlas last week. Last night we took the bus and went to Torchy’s Tacos and got drinks at a few bars. And a very pleasant individual who clearly didn’t understand the pedestrian right-of-way law yelled some colorful words at me as we walked by on the sidewalk and he was pulling out of a parking garage. I returned the gesture with great pleasure. 

So I guess there’s still lots of good in my life, and that’s an honest relief right now after everything I’ve been bogging myself down with mentally. The little things still definitely add up, and I’m still grateful for those. But of course day to day life has its ups and downs. Some mornings I keep my earbuds in after my morning run, and I sing and dance while I make myself breakfast. Other days I’m groaning in despair because it’s the umpteenth time in one week I smashed, dropped or broke most, if not all, of our eggs. You just win some and lose some, I suppose. And if you’re me, you spend a lot of money on eggs. But at the end of the day that wasted yolk is just a drop in the ocean compared to my full and incredible life. 

I hope others out there can still dance like no one’s watching. I hope you can be fulfilled doing the things you love despite the state of the world. I hope your days are filled with more happiness than sorrow. I hope that you choose kindness over hate - unless that rare unicorn of a jerk really needs to be put in their place. I hope you can still thrive in these strange and stressful times.