What were the 3-5 things that gave you joy this week?

1. Kickstarter: I gave to two Kickstarter campaigns this week. One was:

Another is a book project, “Realizing Empathy: an Inquiry into the Meaning of Making.” It made me happy to give, made me feel like an old timey benefactor. It gives me joy to be able to help an artist do good work, and happy to know that if I come up with a good project that needs funding, this is available to me.

Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields…Each and every project is the independent creation of someone like you. Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse.

2. Payday: (This is related to being able to give to Kickstarter campaigns). I don’t always love my job. A lot of the time, it gets in the way of how I would prefer to spend my time, the work I’d rather be paid for, the life I’d rather live, but the satisfaction of being able to do work I can feel good about most of the time, pay my bills, give to worthy causes, spend a little and save a little makes me happy, gives me joy.

3. Good News: I won’t share what it is exactly, because it’s someone else’s personal business, but I’d been worried and the news means there’s nothing to worry about (at least for now, and until the next thing). Even if the relief is temporary or short-lived (because the reality is things are always changing and the nature of life is suffering), it is nice to get good news, and to feel grateful for it, to sit for just a minute with the idea that for now, everything is okay.

4. Sleeping: I had a moment last night when I woke up and felt so happy about my bed, my sheets, my pillows and blankets, my three sleeping boys–and the fact that I was comfortable and relaxed and would be falling back to sleep soon.

5. Epiphany: Both of these were unknowingly facilitated by friends. It reminded me that you can’t really ever know what word or action (or even silence, non-action) will be the one that really makes a difference for someone. I don’t think either friend had any idea that that one idea was the one out of everything else that caused a shift, was the exact thing I needed to hear.

For now, I’ll just give you a taste of what I realized with their help (I’ll post something more about it later): you might get more out of sinking more deeply into “this” than taking on something else/more, and sometimes discursive mind is a sign that something needs to be heard, given your attention.

Bonus moment of joy: I had breakfast this morning with a friend and her little girl. At first, the little one was so shy, she didn’t even want to sit across the table from me, needed to be in Mom’s lap. By the end of our meal, she had softened, and on the way out, she asked me to hold her hand and then blew me a kiss. *heart melting*