1. Morning walks. We walked the dogs at CSU this past Sunday morning. This is the view from my old office, from the outside looking in. I expected to be just a little freaked out at this point that I didn’t have a job to go back to in another week, but I was wrong. I’m content, happy with my choice, looking forward to what comes next — and SO happy I’m not going back there, doing that again.

2. Practice. Yoga, meditation, writing, and dog. Practice can sometimes feel like a contradiction. The intention is to become comfortable with discomfort, to accept that the ground is always shifting, and yet what practice offers is something like stable ground, a strong foundation, a soft place to land. Ultimately one has to be able to hold space for conflicting truths, both/and.

3. Writing, and the good books other people write. The love I have for these two things, the obsession, feels part of my DNA, something you couldn’t take from me no matter what or how hard you tried.

4. Our garden. The new flowers we planted attracted so many bees, moths, butterflies, and grasshoppers. We are also finally getting some tomatoes and a bunch of cucumbers — which is why I’m making these sesame cucumber noodles for dinner tonight.

5. My tiny family. Sam and Ringo like to “help” me cook.

Bonus joy: fresh peaches, zucchini quesadillas with grilled onions, writing with Mikalina, good TV, good movies, good podcasts, aqua aerobics, Pilates, sitting in the sauna, the fitness class I’m taking (and the fact that I can keep up with the 20-year-olds), yoga, clean sheets, getting all the laundry done, sourdough toast with marionberry jam, vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and walnuts, watching dumb TV with Eric, the way we laugh at the same dumb things.