Finding Joy in 2024
A guest post by Karen Smith about sharing her daily writing practice with us
Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were restful and joyous.
Today I’m writing you to invite you to join us for something new (for us) next week. I’ll let Karen Smith, a long-time member of many of our writing groups and workshops, explain what it is in the following essay. I’ve known about her daily writing practice for a long time and have been intrigued and admiring from afar. Now we’re grateful that she can lead us on a writing journey through trying out this practice ourselves. It’s been a delight to work on preparing this workshop with her and I hope you can join Karen, Stephanie, me, and other midlife women, starting January 10th. - Jessica
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On January 1, 2017, a friend recommended her daily practice of writing down the three best things she experienced each day. I, a regular new year’s resolutioner, decided to give it a try. So after dinner, when I was finally able to sit on the couch with my ipad (and a good keyboard!) I stumbled along to a list of what was best that day.
It looked like this:
At the time, in January of 2017, I was parenting two teens, freelancing and consulting a bit, trying to find my purpose as they were growing up and my priorities were shifting yet again. As I write this today here almost 7 years later, I find that I’m still trying to figure out the shifting priorities part. Those kids are in college and grad school but not fully launched. The family needs still exist, my priorities are still in flux. But each night I sit down and reflect on what I’ve been through that day, and each night without fail I find three things to talk about that I took joy in, that I found delight in, that surprised me, that reminded me of what’s important.
It’s a type of gratitude journaling, this daily practice. In the mental health research it’s primarily referred to as Three Good Things (TGT.) Taking time each day to remember and reflect on the good we’ve experienced is a solid mental health strategy leading to positive outcomes on a variety of measures.
I didn’t know when I started this in 2017 what a source of comfort, solidity, and direction this practice would give me. I feel oriented and grounded in my life each day. I feel better in tune with what things truly delight me, what I find important. I didn’t know I was missing these key components before. I just know that now that I’ve found them, I can’t let go.
Great writers often talk about their daily writing as a form of discipline, but also as a kind of meditation. Morning pages, a daily journal, whatever the case may be. I have to be honest, I have failed at those daily writing efforts more times than I can count.
I now consider my three good things practice to be a “stealth” writing practice. While I don’t consciously try to do a lot of writerly things in it — resonance or alliteration or thematic connections between items or sensory details — these flow naturally from the fact that doing this daily causes my brain to seek out ways to express my ideas and be creative in the process.
Steph Sprenger, one of the two HerStories founders, often refers to freewriting from prompts as a way to “clear out your creative pipes” and by doing so, it opens us to opportunities for flow and for deeper work.
I have snuck a daily writing practice into my life that does all this and more. By showing up for myself in this way each day I’m creating the opportunity for regular, sustained practice. And through that regular, sustained practice, I’m improving as a writer even if I don’t quite notice it.
Something else that has happened with this daily practice is the ease with which I can slip into joy. Somewhere in the long days of midlife I felt like I lost track of joy. I had passing moments here and there, but it wasn’t a feeling I would have said was common for me in January of 2017. Now I do things deliberately to give Future Karen something delightful. I was recently in a bank for an errand and noticed the basket of lollipops. I took one and stashed it in my coat pocket. A week later when I was out on a walk and stuck my hands in those pockets, I was delighted to find a lollipop there and joyfully unwrapped it for a little treat on my sunset walk.
Noticing I took such great joy in the colors of sunsets, I began to time my daily walk for that moment. We are lucky enough to live in a place with a wide open western landscape, a soccer park and natural area to our immediate west. I walk into the sunset, trying to get closer to the sun as it tries to escape me by dropping below the horizon line. I chase the sun, drink in the colors. I even find it pleasant when it’s too cloudy for any colors at sunset, which feels like a kind of magic.
Through this practice, I have also learned the art of cognitive reframing. Because I am committed to writing a list of my particularly good things each day, I sometimes have to find joy on horrible, no good, very bad days. These days are hard — the day our dog died, the day I lost my most important writing notebook, the day my son’s best friend since childhood died unexpectedly from an illness at age 20. Even on those days I find a small thing (or three) to appreciate, to recognize as good even among the bad. I have learned to do the work of recognizing my own bad moods and negative thought patterns. With this awareness, I can work to reframe the negativity, to pull out of a negative thought spiral, to give myself the gift of something positive to focus on. I’m not perfect at this, I still get stuck at times, but it’s not as hard anymore.
Somewhere in there among all of this I find myself more settled in my own skin. More aware of what my needs are. More willing to do what I must to get my own needs met. I’m still fully human with bad moods and mistakes I make and ways I get in my own way. However, I find that I can access more tools now, have more paths out of bad moods, more ways to learn from my mistakes and more humor about the way I complicate things for myself. It’s so simple, just writing down the three best things each day, and so profoundly life-altering.
Learn more about Finding Joy, starting January 10th. We’re giving our Substack readers 20% off. (Use the code “SUBSTACK”) Here’s what we think you’ll get from the experience:
understand yourself and your story better
establish or re-establish a writing practice
find writing ideas from the everyday details of your life
explore and express your voice with confidence
bring more joy, presence, and gratitude into your life
join a group of midlife women to support you and your writing journey
Karen Smith writes the The Inside of My Brain Substack from her home in the Midwest, where she’s often delighted by the sights out her window, her cats, her college-aged kids, her spouse, and the mundane details of a life, observed.
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This reminds me of what I like to do, which is write ten things I'm grateful for every morning. I won't lie, after about five, I need to really dig deep because I don't want to repeat myself too much. But I think that's the point, to push yourself. But this practice is wonderful in its different manifestations, thank you for sharing it!
I've heard a lot about the benefits of a "gratitude practice" but it never occurred to me to incorporate this into my daily writing. I love the way this could help me reframe and stick to it. Thanks!