I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas. I did – at home (the actual home-home 🙂 ) for the first time in 5 years and I enjoyed it a lot. Back to reality, I am no stranger to anxiety and the general feeling of Oh my God, when did this year end, why did I not sleep more, why did I fail (Again) to complete my Goodreads challenge, what is happening here? I have a very dark and twisted mind and I generally tend to see the negative, horrible part in every single thing, hence I have tried to counteract all that with a collection of daily positive moments happening around me or with me.

For this purpose, I just used postits (pink, that is a plus 🙂 ) and wrote the date and the thing that made my day better or constituted a great accomplishment for that day.

It was really difficult for me to search the good in what seemed so bad and by no means did I do that daily, but now that I opened the box it really does look like a very useful exercise and I shall share my list of feel good moments here (*the ones which are not extremely private), mainly because it is my blog and I think that it will be great to re-visit those moments. But also because I think this can serve as an example that even a very anxious, troubled person as myself can find something nice about a certain day.

Hence, if I can do it, everybody could, right?

In no particular order, just as they come out of the little (Also pink, ha!) box where I carefully guarded them:

04th of December: Made it to 33. Got re-posted on the TedX Women Barcelona Facebook page. Watched the new Grinch animation and laughed my face off.

01st of August: My brother made it to 38.

03rd of September: The web page for the most important project I ever worked at was up and running.

03rd of February: Touched some snow for the first time in 4 years. Hooray and Yuhuu! (*Actual written words at the time! 🙂 )

26th of January: Barcelona air had a winter scent to it in the morning (Hmm, I can see a pattern here).

23rd of January: Bought a very nice dress.

20th of January: My favorite tennis player won an exhausting crazy match (15-13 in the final set) and I watched it under extreme stress together with 3 friends from 3 different parts of the world.

24th of February: Enjoyed a great evening at the theater.

12th of February: Got the maximum grade at a test from my German class (not likely to repeat anytime soon).

19th of January: The sun literally rose from the building in front of me.

19th of June: Loved my new hair color.

20th of August: Saw and simply loved the movie The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

15th of July: Survived a whole advanced Zumba class with no breaks whatsoever.

28th of July: Wonderful day at the beach.

04th of July: Went to Montjuic – Cine a la Fresca: fries and food for thought.

06th of September: Finally managed to swim in the BIG pool and made it out alive.

11th of March: Cheer-leading at the Barcelona Marathon.

08th of March: Women´s March Barcelona.

10th of March: Watched the crazy waves in Sitges.

31st of January: Acted for a short video in the German class.

21st of January: The sea was lovely.

24th of June: Put on the traditional costume from my country and overdosed with traditional food.

20th of June: Back to the gym after a long break.

09th of June: My favorite tennis player won Roland Garros.

15th of February: Received a package from my mother, filled with goodies and love.

18th of June: Roller bladed and no major injuries occurred.

26th of October: Finally mustered the courage to clean the shoe closet and gave up almost half of my belongings, donating them.

25th of July: Received another amazing package from mom and made it home alive after a very interesting ride.

So, not so many days in the end. I did not want to put too much pressure on myself, so I only filled-in the notes while at home (so, the list is biased by the lack of holiday experiences) and when I remembered to.

You see, it is not mind-blowing, full of big gestures or huge stuff, nor is it the year recap (although some conclusions can be reached). It is simply the exercise of finding a little sparkle in the dark. A little reason to smile or to be grateful in the monotony of days which can sometimes prove too much, or too difficult to handle.

I think I´ll repeat this exercise next year also. For retrospective purposes, I also use the app 1SE, which means that you can tape 1 second of your day and then in the end it makes a video of your year and also the Future Me letter, which is something I had done before when Internet was not a thing (can you imagine?) and loved it then, love it now.

What about you? What was the happiest moment of this day for you?

C.

Featured photo: Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash