1. Morning walks. Walks are good for you, in all kinds of ways. It’s said to improve your mood, improve your heart health, strengthen your bones, relieve joint pain, boost your immune system, aid digestion, boost your energy, enhance your quality of sleep, improve cognition, feed your creativity, help you feel connected — so many good things. I don’t think about any of that when I’m walking though. I’m looking for critters and things to take pictures of and talking to Ringo and enjoying the sunrise. 

2. Good friends. Ones who make me laugh, send me pie, make art with me, send me texts and funny gifs, let me love on their dogs and kids, make me banana bread.

3. Ringo’s habits. Even the ones that are sort of annoying are cute, like when he boops me in the butt to try and get me to play with him, or how he digs up the couch every night when we sit down to watch TV after dinner, or how he finds lost things (toys, gloves, hats, socks, etc.) on his walk and brings them home to love, the way he spends the two weeks after we turn our clocks back an hour thinking I’ve forgotten to feed him and begging for the next hour, how he stands in the back yard barking in the hopes that one of the four neighbor dogs will come out and bark with him, how he goes down on one shoulder and flips over on to his back wagging his tail like crazy for the five people in the world he loves the most, how he’ll make a nest of pillows and blankets on the couch, and how happy it makes him to find a stick and carry it on his walk.

4. Content — books, TV, movies, podcasts, magazines, music. This will most likely be one of my top regrets at the end of my life, that I didn’t have enough time to read all the books, watch all the TV, listen to all the podcasts, etc.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I love it here.

Bonus joy: practicing yoga at Red Sage, how much Ringo loves Chloe’ and Teri, having only one hour of rain on a day it was predicted to be wet and gloomy the whole entire day, writing with my Friday morning sangha, working on my book, stickers, rechargeable headlamps, potato chips, good neighbors, the opportunity to start over, naps, down blankets and pillows and coats, wool socks, bluetooth speakers, my infrared heating pad, writing in the morning with a hot mug of green tea and my HappyLight, clean sheets, bread, a big glass of cold clean water, houseplants, tarot, pens with refillable ink, paint, meditation, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.

Special mention: all the dogs I’ve loved and lost, which is more happy that we got to love you than sad we had to lose you, the kind of grief/love that never really goes away, you just wear it and carry it for so long that it gets a funny, awkward sort of comfortable.

1. Morning walks. One of the best reasons to have a dog is that they need to be walked and they need it even if you’d rather not, even if you’d rather stay in bed or on the couch. My sleepy morning self doesn’t always see the value of getting outside and moving around before the sun even comes up so I’m glad I have a dog who reminds me.

2. Practice. I’ve been writing a lot more lately, having challenged myself to 30 days of 1000 words a day and then joining Summer Brennan for her Essay Camp, which goes until November 5th but can be continued until the end of the month. I already write every day, and some days I’m also blogging or writing with my Friday morning wildish sangha, but this challenge is focused on writing “The Book.” I have 500+ pages already so the real trick is figuring out what goes in this book and what belongs somewhere else.

3. The Comedy Fort. For a really long time, Fort Collins didn’t have a good place to see comedy. Bigger comedians sometimes schedule a show at The Lincoln Center, but for those who can’t fill that large of a room, we had to go to Boulder or Denver. But now, The Comedy Fort is filling that gap. The tickets are reasonably priced and there isn’t a bad seat in the whole space and ordering drinks on your phone right from your seat is super easy and they absolutely will throw you out if you heckle the performers. Chloe’ and I saw one of our favorite comedians, Chris Fairbanks, last weekend and I laughed so hard my face hurt, and then I was home in under ten minutes and in bed by 10 pm. I know it might sound weird, and it probably is, but my two favorite content types are true crime (including stories about cults) and comedy. People who make me laugh are my favorite.

4. Books. Thank goodness my birthday and Christmas are coming up because there are a bunch of new books I want/need, like Lama Rod Owens’ latest release, The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors. I’m currently reading The Covenant of Water and it’s so good! I really loved Cutting for Stone, so I’m not surprised his latest is good too. I haven’t been sleeping great so I was asking Eric advice and one thing he suggested is to not read in bed before I go to sleep anymore. I just laughed and said, “well, that’s never going to happen.”

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. It’s everything I ever wanted.

Bonus joy: we are going to finally bake the pie Shellie sent for dessert tonight and my mouth is watering just thinking about it, The Sun Magazine, dark chocolate, the banana bread Cynthia sent, listening to podcasts, chrysanthemums, our neighbors who have their Christmas trees up and their Halloween decorations still out, other people’s kids and dogs, multicolored highlighters, stickers (OMG, I just found out that Morgan Harper Nichols has stickers!), my weighted blanket, when there is warm water coming out of the side vents in the pool, sitting in the sauna with Eric, the hydromassage chair, HRT, down blankets and pillows and jackets, saving Rocky Mountain Bee Plant seeds, my infrared heating pad, a good pair of slippers, doing a few things that had been on my todo list for YEARS, puppy breath, tarot cards, getting books for my Kindle from the library and figuring out how to cheat the return date (if my Kindle is in airplane mode, I can keep reading the book as long as I want), reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.