Weekly happy things, Volume 3

I kind of love that this little recap has started to become a Friday tradition. It’s incredibly easy for me to fall into pessimistic thoughts and let my anxieties spin out of control, and I’m legitimately enjoying doing a look-back through my past week to capture the little things that made me happy instead of dwelling on the negatives. Let’s keep this shit up, yeah? 🙂

This discovery in my yard

Hairy bittercress growing in my yard next to a garden bed. Technically considered a weed, but in the mustard family and edible. The kiddo, ever the brave and adventurous foodie, picked a bloom and popped it in their mouth. I guess someone at camp last year told them it was edible and they already knew it was safe before I did (but my mothering instincts panicked a bit at first until I verified kiddo was right and wasn’t going to end up violently ill on me)

This modern-day Michaelangelo moment

Tiny spider that was apparently living on my old mountain bike. Went to Google Lens it to determine what kind it was, but needed to boop it (gently) first and ended up with this moment.

I might need this new planner

There’s been an ongoing discussion in my house about my current existential crisis and who I am/how I define myself now that I’m not going to be able to tie my identity to a specific job or business. I usually use some combination of bullet journal and discbound planner to keep track of my tasks and life, but knowing that I’m winding down a lot of the “busy-ness” of my life has left me feeling like what’s the point in using a planner? So when I discovered this hardbound planner at Barnes & Noble, I cackled out loud and immediately took a photo of it to send to my husband saying “Look, it’s me now!”

This organized shelf

I spent some time cleaning and reorganizing my art shelving, and snapped this photo mostly as a reminder that I do not need yet another sketchbook. I have several large ones that aren’t even used, and a few smaller ones – which is the format I tend to gravitate to using most frequently. But seeing them all neatly arranged and organized made my ridiculously happy… and now I just need to use them.

My first oil painting

I tried oil painting this week for the very first time. There are mistakes galore in this piece, and I ended up going back after I snapped this photo with a soft dry brush to blend that gradient of the light out more so it’s not quite so defined. Imperfections and all, I definitely learned a lot from this first adventure with a new medium.

This late bloomer

This amaryllis has been on my kitchen window sill for, what, 4? Maybe 5 years now? I planted it before Christmas one year, and after its flower died back the leaves were still healthy so I just left it. Every year, now, it blooms in the spring.

Reads that resonated with me:

(Actually, this entire article resonated, but this section made me feel things about my current grieving process of letting go of the yarn shop that was a dream that just didn’t work out like I hoped it would.)

• “Ambiguous grief lingers in the spaces between what is and what could have been. It is not always loud or overwhelming, but it is persistent. It feels like mourning the death of an alternate version of yourself—the one who existed in dreams, in plans, in quiet moments of certainty about the future.
  
  It is the ache of parallel possibilities slipping through your fingers, the slow realization that some doors will never open, no matter how hard you knock.
  
  It may seem naive now, but could anyone blame you for being young and believing that a specific version of your future was possible? Hope is not just a wishful indulgence; it is the foundation upon which we build our lives.
  
  And when that foundation cracks, the grief that follows is not just for what was lost, but for the person you once were—the one who believed, without question, that things would turn out differently.” – Jon Soto