I hesitated in my naming of this post, but I think it fits.  I have recently rediscovered several things that I enjoy doing.  I am not surprised that I enjoy them, but was surprised as to how long it had been since I had done them and how much I truly enjoyed rediscovering them.  In many ways it was like putting on a pair of pants and finding $5 in the pocket.  It was unexpected, but neat.

The first was tinkering with several project devices I have around the house.   I thoroughly enjoy digging into them and seeing what all I can do with them, but it had been awhile since I dug into them.  I was cleaning out my office and found one project in particular that I had left in a state of disarray and started to take care of some of the simple things that needed done first to get it into a workable state.  Before I knew it, I had made significant progress and realized that the time had just flown by.  The sense of accomplishment and the ideas of what to do next were both enjoyable and energizing.

The second was listening to an old playlist on my older iPod classic.  I normally exercise to one of a few channels on Spotify, but had a comms problem that prevented me from being able to stream Spotify, so I dug out my iPod, which amazingly enough, still had plenty of battery life, and selected my old exercise playlist.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed several of those songs and that led me to spending quite a while scrolling through and listening to songs I hadn’t listened to in ages.  As with the project above, I reluctantly stopped listening to get other things done, but I had thoroughly enjoyed the time and resolved to do it again soon.

The third, and final one that I will cite here, was picking up The Lord of the Rings again and starting to re-read it.  I love the story, the writing and the characters. From the first words of “Concerning Hobbits”, I was drawn back in and I quickly found myself as entranced as the first time I read it.  Like a comfortable pair of jeans, or a bowl of soup in front of a fire on a chilly fall day, the story wrapped around me and I rediscovered the joy I had reading it the first time.

I am quite sure that there are similar “joys” in our lives that we have misplaced or spent too much time away from.  The challenge is to both rediscover them and then do them.  I hope that you all rediscover at least one thing during this beginning of the holiday rush that enables you to experience some level of unexpected joy.