“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

—Kurt Vonnegut

Introduction by Ted Kooser: I don’t think I’ve ever sold anything that, later, I didn’t wish I had back, and I have a list of regrets as long as my arm. So this poem by Melissa Balmain really caught my attention. Balmain lives in New York State, and her most recent book is Walking in on People, from Able Muse Press.

Love Poem

The afternoon we left our first apartment,

we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet.

Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins?

It suddenly seemed nuts to move away.

The morning someone bought our station wagon,

it gleamed with wax and every piston purred.

That car looked like a centerfold in Hot Rod!

Too late, we saw that selling was absurd.

And then there was the freshly tuned piano

we passed along to neighbors with a wince.

We told ourselves we’d find one even better;

instead we’ve missed its timbre ever since.

So if, God help us, we are ever tempted

to ditch our marriage when it’s lost its glow,

let’s give the thing our finest spit and polish—

and, having learned our lesson, not let go.

Today we are having all our carpets cleaned. This means the whole house is torn apart, the animals are disturbed, it’s noisy, and my usual Monday routine has been upended. That’s the bad news.

The good news is: our carpets will look like new and I will feel like I got something major accomplished from my to do list (never mind that I’m not doing the actual cleaning).

I feel untethered—without my usual Monday activities performed in their usual order. Sometimes, untethered is good. Sometimes I narrow my vision too much, and become inflexible. Routines can become so ingrained that I lose all my creativity and joy in the doing.

I don’t want to throw all my routines to the wind, but maybe, just for today, I will. Maybe today I’ll binge read Janice MacLeod-Lik’s blog. Maybe today I’ll write a poem. Maybe today I’ll lounge around and finish reading Rex Stout’s Death of a Doxy. Maybe I won’t do one more blessed thing that could be considered productive.

It poured last night, so I expected the air to be soupy this morning, but it’s surprisingly cool and fresh. As I walk, hear birds chirping, see cardinals, a catbird, and a blue jay flitting about. I also see a hawk glide silently to a perch high in tree.

Since I’m alone and not walking for exercise (i.e., fast), I notice things I frequently miss: the way the traffic along the main road near us hums almost harmoniously; the large shell ginger plants outside someone’s backyard, heavy with flowers; star jasmine scenting my own backyard. I see places where wild hogs have rooted through the woods looking for food. When I look up, I see spring green leaves forming a canopy over the path. Simple pleasures usually lost in the hurry of daily living.

I’m lucky enough to have a quiet, safe place to walk right in my community—I can walk right out my back gate onto a paved trail. I usually take it for granted. Even worse, when I do use it, I almost always only use it for exercise—making the loop as quickly as I can instead of taking it slowly, exploring, noticing. As part of my focus on delight this year, I plan to take more of these short, rambling walks. At least until the heat and humidity make it impossible to enjoy. I know that day is coming, and soon, but until then, I’ll indulge in a few more relaxed morning walks. Who knows what I might discover?

Reading is like dating. There are the books you’re initially infatuated with, but become irritated by as the relationship progresses. There are the books you should love because they’re perfect for you, but you just can’t seem to connect. There are the books you love secretly because they’re no good, and you’d be embarrassed if your friends knew. There are the fix-ups, the “meet cutes,” the love-at-first-sights, and the long-term relationships that grow stronger over time. For me, Janice MacLeod’s Paris Letters was an immediate friendship that grew into love. However, it was a romance that almost never happened.

See below for downloadable stationery*

I initially requested Paris Letters from the library thinking it was a book of artwork, the painted letters from Paris referenced in the title. When it turned out to be memoir, I nearly took it back, because do I really need to read another story of a woman simplifying her life, jetting off to see the world, and finding herself and/or true love? I mean, I’ve read Eat, Pray, Love and many other stories both fictional and non- of that ilk. Still, I decided to read the first few pages just to see…and I connected with MacLeod immediately. I liked her turns of phrase and casual voice. She seemed approachable, down-to-earth, real.  Somehow, this story of a 30-something vegan copywriter who goes to Paris and unexpectedly falls in love with a French-speaking Polish butcher resonated with me.

For MacLeod, it all started with a New Year’s resolution in 2010. She wanted to become an artist, and began journaling nearly every day, following Julia Cameron’s instructions regarding Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way. “Really, I just wanted to create something that made me feel good, because what I was currently creating definitely did not,” MacLeod writes.  What was she creating? Junk mail.

After two months of journaling and complaining about her job, a question emerged: “How much money does it take to quit your job?” In discussing it with a friend, she chose the figure of $100 a day (partly because of the easy math!) multiplied by how many days she did not want to work (at least one year). She spent the next year selling, saving and being vigilant about where her money went, eventually saving $60,000! It helped that she had a good job and was successful investing in the stock market. She quit her job in December with the plan of traveling the world and writing about it. When her money ran out, she would decide what to do next.

The rest of the book follows her journey to Paris, the UK, Italy…and back to Paris to be with “the lovely Cristophe.” She writes humorously about her struggles to communicate with Cristophe, the daunting paperwork required for her visa, and the challenges of (spoiler alert) planning a wedding in a foreign country. The title of the book comes from her unique solution for refilling her dwindling bank account: she would write and illustrate an original letter from Paris, and make personalized copies to sell. (At the time the book was printed, she had sent out more than 10,000 painted letters about life in France.) Some chapters end with copies of her Paris letters, illustrated in black and white (an unfortunate decision made by her publisher). She also includes a list of 100 ways she saved or didn’t spend her $100 a day. You can see (and subscribe to) her illustrated letters here.

Paris Letters was a happy read—and so far, one of my favorite books of 2015.