Logging "Nice Things and Accomplishments"

Happy first day of October! For those of you who, like me, start a new life on the first day of every new month, happy new life!

In my trusty little notebook, I keep a log for each month of its "nice things and accomplishments," so I won't look back at the end of the month and wail, "In this whole entire month, I did NOTHING AT ALL!" I'm both reasonably lax and reasonably strict as to what counts as either a nice thing or an accomplishment. So nice as it is, I wouldn't include a pleasant lunch with a good friend whom I see on a regular basis, but I would include a glorious extended visit from a friend from out of town. In the category of accomplishments, I wouldn't include writing individual blog posts, but I did include the blog post series back in January from my trip to Paris. I have standards here, folks!

Usually I end up with 7 or 8 items. January (month of the trip to Paris and its aftermath), I had a whopping 14. For February, I had only 5. But last month I had the most paltry total EVER: a mere three things. 1) I wrote a long-overdue substantive book review for the Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 2) I made steady happy progress on my new middle-grade-novel-in-progress, with 100 pages done of the first draft. And 3) I had a perfectly beautiful first full month with my True Love at Rainbow's End where we deepened our already deep love and strengthened our already strong relationship - oh, and I started a practice of journaling about this every day - which I guess I could count as item number 4. 

Item #2 could have been broken down into giving myself credit for each individual chapter I wrote, but the chapters are short and still feel so tentative and provisional, as if any one of them might be tossed out completely - nay, as if the whole project might be tossed out completely, And, as I just noted, #3 could count as two things - the beautiful happy month AND the faithful journaling about it. But...now that I think of it, is having a beautiful happy month itself a THING? Is it thing-like enough to BE a THING? Or is it just how my life is now? And I hope, how my life will be forever? Or at least for a good long while?

I have to confess that in the grip of this new love, I'm losing my mania for cataloging things. I even - gasp! - took off my Fitbit, for good, two days ago. Once I returned from the morning walk with David and Gaia-the-dog, I realized I had left it in the charger overnight and was getting credit for NONE of those steps, which at first threw me into the usual despair, for isn't any walk pointless if the steps aren't duly calculated? And then I realized.. um... no... because... there was the beauty of the misty morning on Valley Lane... and his hand in mine.

So, while I still think a monthly log of nice things and accomplishments has much to recommend it, as a hedge against underestimating our own productivity, I'm coming around to the view that if I can write on each month's list 1) FATHOMS DEEP IN LOVE and 2) OVERCOME WITH HAPPINESS, that might be enough (though I hasten to add that I did already log for October receipt of book royalties that were larger than I expected and a well-received talk via ZOOM for a literary organization). 

But these days "being" satisfies me (almost?) as much as "doing" - even if I'm glad I wrote this blog post now and can cross it off my to-do list for October!