Finding Joy in the Loose Threads

I have officially survived the first week of summer vacation, though I’m not quite sure I’ve hit the “vacation” portion of it yet.
So far, my introduction to summer vacation has included a large farmers’ market, my first online tutoring gig, a power outage, and the last stubborn pieces of the school year still trailing along behind me as I try to leave it behind. It has been a good start to vacation, but it has also been full and had plenty of equally chaotic moments.
The end of the school year feels a lot like stepping off a moving treadmill. Your body knows you’re allowed to slow down, but your brain hasn’t quite gotten the message yet. There are still emails to answer, things to pack up, plans to make, and leftover tasks from the year that don’t magically disappear just because the calendar says summer has arrived.
However, in the middle of all the hustle and bustle, I’ve been trying to pay attention to the small joys.
I’ve finished two books… IN A WEEK! From February/March 2025 to April 2026, I was lucky if I read three books, and even that was very half-heartedly. I’ve been journaling and writing again after months of writerly famine. I’ve also started learning macrame, which has been a surprisingly lovely little craft to settle into. There’s something calming about working with your hands, making knots, untangling yarn and cord, and slowly watching something you pictured take shape. It’s simple, but not mindless. Productive, but not frantic. Honestly, I think my brain needed that more than I realized.
And maybe that’s the thing I’m RElearning right now.
Joy doesn’t always arrive as some grand, glowing moment. Sometimes it’s just a quiet page at the end of the day. A few minutes with a pen in hand. A new knot finally making sense. A good conversation. A funny little moment at the market. A sentence that lands just right. One small thing that makes you smile before the day runs away with itself.
So that’s what I’m clinging to this week.
Not perfect rest. Not a perfectly peaceful summer, because who am I kidding? Not even some magical reset where everything slows down exactly when I need it to.
Just one or two small joys a day.