Tag Archives: Writing

Fun, Humor, Intentionality, Joy, Playfulness

8 Bits of Joy

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Early on in 2025, I published a blog post about cultivating joy. I maintain this is a worthy pursuit for me AND for you. This, combined with a blogger I’ve followed for years, who, earlier this summer, published a post sharing pictures of herself in joyful moments, leads me to want to share the things that have been providing me with joy during these last gasps of summertime.

A recent picture of me in a moment of joy at the local Rutabaga Festival!

I didn’t catch his name, but one can assume it was “Rudy”, right?!

Please do me a solid and share in the comments what is bringing joy into your life right now. I think in these times, focusing on and sharing our joys could be quite beneficial, don’t you agree?

Off I go:

  1. The charcuterie board-making class that my SIL and I participated in back in July. This brought together three things I love: creative self-expression, food, and quality time with my slightly younger sister. Here’s what I created that night:

2. Ilena Tovia, who creates video content on Facebook (and no doubt other social media outlets) of herself cooking in her kitchen. I think she can best be described as “that goofy cooking lady on Facebook”, because she has an authentic goofiness to her and she never fails to crack me up.

3. Feeling uninspired by the offerings on any of the streaming apps we have on our t.v. the other night, I clicked on an episode of “The Great British Baking Show”. After hearing about this show for years, I finally watched it. What an absolute delight! The contestants and judges were kind to each other and clearly having a ball using their creative spirits to come up with often beautiful, edible works of art. I’m not big on reality/competition shows in general, so this surprised me. I think I found my new happy show!

4. At work last month, one of our awesome volunteers randomly called to ask if we all wanted some free sweet corn. He had just picked it. We took him up on his offer, and he arrived within a couple of hours with several bags of the most delicious sweet corn I’d had all summer.

5. When I’m futzing around in the kitchen, I often want to listen to music. Lately, I’ve been telling Google to play the music of the band Lake Street Dive. The main singer, Rachel, has a voice that is just something else. She and her band do a phenomenal job of covering other artists songs as well, bringing their own twist to it. Here’s a prime example:

6. French fries. One of my all-time favorite foods. And I am quite talented at making them at home in my air fryer, if I do say so myself. I wash up two or three Russets, slice them thin-nish, plop them in a mixing bowl, drizzle some good olive oil on them, and season liberally with Penzey’s Florida Seasoned Pepper, and a few shakes of corse sea salt. Let the air fryer do its magic for about 20 minutes, and it’s *chefs kiss* perfection for this french-fry enthusiast.

7. This video I saw online last week. In my opinion, Bohemian Rhapsody is high on the list of “Best Rock Songs Ever”. If you agree and want to experience a bit of joy, I hope you watch it.

8. This song. Do yourself a favor today and take a few minutes to enjoy this video!

My hope is that each one of you reading this today will make time to ponder what is bringing you pure, unadulterated joy!

Aging, Humor, Intentionality, Lifestyle, Self Improvement

I Feel Bad about my Arms

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Years ago, I started reading a book (possibly a memoir?) by Nora Ephron. When she wrote something to the effect of “I feel bad about my neck”, in that she felt it needed covering because as she’d gotten older the skin started looking crepey. I stopped reading after that line, because I just couldn’t relate. It felt like she was speaking to women “of a certain age” (aka much older than me at that time). And my neck was perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch.

Now I kinda get it. Only for me, it’s about my arms.

I was looking in the mirror a month or so ago and decided I didn’t like the appearance of my upper arms. They are flabby and jiggly and just overall unattractive. As I enjoy wearing sleeveless tops in the summertime, I decided to address this situation with intention.

Now, I’ve always had little upper-arm strength. I remember being one of maybe two or three other kids in middle school who were unable to do that thing where you hang by your arms on a metal bar. I also have hereditary peripheral neuropathy, which causes my limbs to frequently give me that oh-so-fun feeling of pins and needles, in particular when I stay in one position for too long.

I figured the simplest route to reducing my upper arm flab would be to incorporate doing push-ups on my bedroom floor during my regular morning yoga stretching/praying session.

Guess what? I can do up to 27 sit-ups now! Granted they are not the traditional, full-on push-ups; they are the kind of push-ups where I’m on my knees so that it’s only the upper half of my body weight in play. Then, I will do up to 4 actual, real push-ups. Well, real enough. I estimate that I’ve gone from moving 1/2 inch toward the floor to 1 whole inch since I began this routine.

This might seem quite pathetic to you all, especially if you’re the sporty type. But I see it as a baby step toward my goal of having less flabby arms and a stronger core. If I just remain consistent with it, I ought to get results.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

For your auditory enjoyment, may I present an uplifting, groovy little tune sung by a one-of-a-kind artist, Ray LaMontagne.

Ambition, Anxiety, Blogging, Inspiration, Life, Mindset, Overthinking

Defecate or Disembark

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Or, as my Dad used to say, “shit or get off the pot”.

That’s how I feel sometimes about blogging, among other things.

I’ve always been a person with a thousand ideas in my head, often at the same time. This makes it challenging to make decisions, which leads to anxiety. I suppose that’s why making “to-do” lists on the regular works for me. I have a mission written in black and white, and all I have to do is follow it.

The “to-do” list method doesn’t exactly work for creating blog posts, however. Writing blog posts is far more nuanced than doing a load of laundry and checking it off my list. There’s thought that goes into it. Oftentimes, for better or worse, too much thought (hence the reason if you are a regular follower of this blog, you may notice there’s sometimes long pauses between posts).

But then, sometimes anyway, I get to the point where I’ve had enough of all of this overthinking. Enough of the brain chatter I’ve been marinating in.

Surely I am not alone in this quagmire of indecisiveness.

Perhaps for you it’s a decision about going on that vacation you’ve been pondering for months. Or if you should take that class that piqued your interest. Or something simpler like if you are going to buy that snazzy new coat you saw at your favorite department store. Whatever it is that gets you hemming and hawing ad naseum.

Don’t you just get so tired of it? I do.

Let me give you an example from my personal life. I’ve known for a long time that I don’t have it in me to be apolitical. Until recently, my apolitical-ness has been shared on occasion via this blog and other social media platforms. Earlier this month, I decided to put myself out there and “walk the talk” as they say. Twice I volunteered to canvass in my community for the Democrat party. I got off the “pot” and did my best to embrace the discomfort of knocking on strangers’ doors to advocate voting for Harris/Walz and the Democrats down ballot. It felt good to do so.

I aim to do more of this in other areas of my life, because making a decision and then taking action on that decision, while scary, is empowering. Staying in my head and not actually doing anything to express what’s in there does not move me forward.

I think it’s wise to remember the lyrics from the band Rush’s song “Freewill”: “if you choose to not decide, you still have made a choice”.

Seems pretty fitting in a lot of cases in this life, don’t you think? Not making a choice leads to inertia and stagnancy. It doesn’t move us forward at all. It just holds us back.

What “pot” do you need to unload on or choose to disembark from in your life?