These words are printed on a poster in an office I sometimes visit and they always make me feel the tiniest bit uplifted. For a few moments I focus on the poster, on those words, it’s as if they wipe away the dust and grime on a dirty window and allow me to look out at a world as it could be. In my mind’s eye I see a landscape in soft, muted light where it’s safe to be out in the open and feel the sun upon my face and bare arms, and my heart feels the tiniest bit lighter somehow.
Life has not turned out the way I expected it would, but I’m still here, so I simply have to get on with it. I’m trying to fit at least one kind, inspiring, or happy thing into my day. I’ve discovered learning new things, or new ways to do things, gives me a little bit of pleasure, as does making something for myself, or to share in some way.
When the world gets too heavy to bear, I need something to remind me how to make some pleasant moments for myself. It doesn’t matter how many pleasant moments there have been, they are gone; sure, I have the memory, but memory can be cold and uncompromising in the dark and lonely night. Often too, those sometimes pleasant memories are tied up with other awfulness-es that I’d rather remained mouldering in their graves than be brought up yet again. I know they are there, those awful things happened, they shaped my life, the residue of which I have to live with every day, which is why I am in such need of moments of happiness to balance out the grief, despair and deep depression that survival has marked me with.
This little project is to help me do what I enjoy doing, sharing the little joys and triumphs of moments of self sufficiency, of learning a new skill and doing for oneself. I like to imagine that by sharing how I motivate myself, someone else might find a moment of pleasure of their own!
Whether it’s making a cake with ingredients that would otherwise go to waste, sewing an article of clothing in a fabric I like, making a jar of jammy goodness from cheap fruit, or finding the will to cook an easy but tasty meal for myself even though getting out of bed was a momentous effort, I’m hunting down every tiny wee thing I can to make my days less daunting and my nights more restful.
Won’t you join me in finding your own wee pleasures to lift the tedium of having a black dog as a recalcitrant and often disobedient companion?