2022 Jar of Good Things™
This week, I was reminded that I had not, as I had begun to assume, solved all the mysteries of life. I took myself to a women’s meeting on Wednesday night, where I had not gone in a while, and told the 20 or so fellow seekers that I felt like I had been running through an internal minefield and stepping on every hidden explosive.
BOOM went my family and BOOM went my lawyer and BOOM went my never ending post-divorce drama.
I told all the women sitting on metal folding chairs in a big circle that I’d also had something really good happen at the start of the workweek and that I wanted to focus on those types of things. Let all the good in my life be the part played by Jennifer Aniston in my internal narrative drama and not the bad stuff. Obviously, Angelina can slog through that script.
So to commemorate that really good professional thing that seemed to come out of nowhere (except I kind of manifested it), I was like: “I need to add this to the Jar of Good Things™.”
And then I was like, “Hey, wait a minute.”
Because I had no idea where the jar was.
At the start of last year, I wrote here about the big mason jar to which I had added slips of paper throughout 2021 to document the things I wanted to remember. There were some big things — like the new job and a college acceptance. But there were little things as well, like kind words from an editor that I did a lot of freelance work for and a cup of fluffernutter ice cream on a hot summer night. Things I might never have remembered again had I not scribbled them down and put them in the jar.
I’d like to blame the jar’s disappearance on my move last summer. How I quickly sold my home and pulled up stakes and relocated about 25 minutes south to a rental not far from the beach. If it’s been a while since you moved, let me confirm that it is as horrible as you may have remembered it to be and maybe a little worse if you have to do it alone. Maybe.
Now, the majority of stuff that I own is boxed up in my rental’s creepy basement (aka Spider Cricket Kingdom) or its equally creepy detached garage. I just assumed the Jar of Good Things™ got sucked up into the moving mania and was now tucked away in a box with decorative ginger jars and votive candles, waiting to be unearthed one day.
I mentioned its disappearance to my 20yo son and he said, “Oh, that’s in there,” pointing to a sideboard that used to act as my bar and is now holding my extensive collection of dish linens and placemats. “Since when does he know where things are?” I wondered.
Here’s the bad news: even though I moved in July, I really stopped documenting my “good things” in about February of last year, according to the dates I scribbled at the bottom of each slip of paper. The one exception was a magically large amount of money that suddenly appeared in my checking account at the end of March.
Herewith are the highlights of the good things that happened in Q122: a heavenly chocolate cake from a fancy new bakery; friends who brought me Mucinex and croissants when I had COVID; a new standing desk in my home office; a shout-out to my sister who always watches my dog for me; my friend’s mom who was absolutely tickled to be turning 80; and my car wash giving me a discount to wash all the bird poop off my car after it was attacked while sitting in my driveway under a tree.
Of course, a lot of big things happened in 2022 for me that never made it into the jar. I sold my aforementioned house by myself, which helped a lot with my finances. I reconnected with my mom after a long time of not speaking. I celebrated two years of sobriety and last, but certainly, not least on this list, I finished the first draft of a book.
What else didn’t make it into the jar?
A number of getaways — tropical vacays to Punta Cana and Aruba with kids; a freezing cold weekend snowshoeing in Vermont with my Ladycationers and then a few days in Maine with the same group of ladies where we ate life-changing lobster rolls at a picnic table about 100 yards from one of those quintessential Maine lighthouses; I went back to Vermont in the fall with my college crew — the Hens — where our hostess arranged for a local chef to come and prepare a super special dinner for the eight of us, gathered around her big round table sharing multiple courses of this farm-to-table harvest meal with girls we used to drink mugs of beer that cost a quarter.
Also missing: the chapter that closed on both living with teenagers and having to worry about getting their wisdom teeth removed — I checked both off the list last year. There was our fantastic Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant where we made countless Ratatouille jokes and my youngest said we all looked so fancy, “Like we owned stocks.” The lovely Christmas morning when we all cried when that youngest kid watched me open the picture he had a friend draw from a photo of me and him standing together during a trip to California about 10 years earlier. In it, I have my arm around him and am leaning down to kiss the top of his head while he looks straight at the camera, his hands tucked into his sweatshirt pocket.
I scrolled through all my photos from last year (an absolute rabbit hole) and was reminded of some smaller, but no less wonderful, moments. The mason jar of fuchsia hydrangea left at my door by a new neighbor; the purple morning glories that twisted up the lattice at the end of my new porch; speaking of that front porch, there are countless photos of my feet up on the couch and a book open on my lap. There was my birthday in August, and sitting on our new beach surrounded by my four children and a book in each of our laps; I was reminded of how much my two younger kids helped me get out of our old house — the pictures of the UHaul we rented two weekends in a row to lug as much shit as we could to the rental and one shot of our Goldendoodle sitting behind the truck’s wheel that cracked us up.
When I finally pulled myself out of the iPhoto hole, I pushed all the Jar of Good Things™ scraps from last year aside and scribbled on a strip of long white paper the good work thing that happened and dropped it into the big jar, where it’s sitting, waiting for all the other good things in 2023 to join it.
Somehow, TikTok got the message that I really wanted to manifest more good things in my life, because it’s been feeding me videos of girls testifying how when they tap into the energy of good things happening to them all the time, more good stuff happens. And aside from the absolute creepiness of how TikTok knew this was my current vibe, I’m really into it.
Good things happen to us all the time. We just need to pay attention. It’s so easy to focus on all the bad stuff, because who doesn’t want to see the Angelia Jolie of our lives playing out all that damn drama on our internal movie screens? Love her or hate her, Angie is fun to watch.
Personally, I’m going to opt for the more positive narrative in 2023. That’s the energy I want you to feel radiating off of me. All that good karma, just shining through me like the movie lights off Jen Aniston’s highlights on a really good hair day. Let’s do this.
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SUNDAY SHARES: Read, watch, cook, buy
I started the new year immersed in both an audiobook and old school paperback. The latter was Emily Henry's Book Lovers, which I loved. Romance is hot, people, and Henry does it so well. Smart. Developed characters. Slightly spicy. So much book talk. Lovers you're rooting for. Check plus. On the audio side, I DEVOURED The Latecomer, a novel that's narrated by Julia Whelan (who's excellent). I am all about family dysfunction, and this story — about triplets and their much-younger sibling — gives it to you in spades. I just found things to do (laundry, walking the dog, sitting in bed) to power through the last two hours.
I gobbled up the latest season of Emily in Paris on Netflix, and say what you will, that show is gorgeous to look at. The clothes, the kooky outfits, the fabulous Sylvie slinking her post-50 self around looking drop-dead gorgeous. Hey, if we could tune into Falcon Crest and Knot's Landing every week back in the day, we are not too good for this.
I cooked. Like, I actually made something this week, and it was a triumph. Of course, any recipe on the Halfbaked Harvest website is a winner, but this crockpot coconut chicken curry was both delicious AND super easy. And no, I did not make the "crispy shallot basil oil" suggested to accompany it (because let's not get crazy), and it was still super yummy.
In the consumer category of this list, I have much to share. Let's just go with some of my favorite holiday gifts from kids that I am absolutely obsessed with: Bomba slippers, Nutribullet for smoothies, this JCrew cashmere wrap, and a mini Theragun for my old lady back.
Finally, I am sharing this TikTok video that came up while scrolling in bed last night that highlights one of my MAJOR pet peeves (just ask my kids) as a PSA in case you're an offender.
xoAmy
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