My friend Amanda Meyncke (who’s been a guest on Kottke before, talking about musician Bill Callahan) has a new(ish) podcast, called Happiness Spells. It’s a five-minute podcast that’s delivered twice a week, and it’s just about things that make you happy. From the “About” page:
Happiness Spells is devoted to noticing and celebrating the small pleasures of life.
This life is filled with enjoyable things, and the foundation of all creativity and true joy is in noticing and appreciating all that lies around us and in us.
That’s very Kottke-like! (In fact, Amanda contacted me to note the overlap between her podcast’s raison d’etre and the themes I’ve been exploring at Noticing.)
The experience of listening to the podcast is very meditative. As the narrator (Amanda) tells you at the beginning, it works best with headphones. There’s gentle ambient music playing, and the narrator just reads a list of ordinary, everyday things that make you happy, even if (actually, often) in an oblique way. Like these from the January 31 edition:
- Listening to a little kid tell you a joke that they just learned, even if it doesn’t make much sense.
- People who understand and celebrate your introvert self when you need them to.
- When a friend texts to cancel plans just as you were debating texting them to cancel.
- Coming home to a clean house, clean kitchen, clean floors and rooms.
from kottke.org http://bit.ly/2CZlxT9
via IFTTT
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