Things to Enjoy

Everybody, if they can help it, should try and enjoy various small things in life for their own sake. Obviously, it's nice to meet new people, have high-energy fun, travel, achieve things in your career, but you can't remain in that mode all the time, can you...? Some of my suggestions for things you can enjoy:

• Watching magpies (or crows, if your region hasn't got magpies) hop around, foraging and playing with each other.
• Drinking hot tea. You can bring tea leaves and a thermos around with you, tap hot water from a public purifier or hot water tank or office kettle, and instantly brighten your day. It's nice to have roasted grain teas, too, and infusions of hawthorne, jujube, goji, etc. I like those better than tisanes, but the tea leaf is still my favourite.
• Riding a bicycle. The sound of wheels rolling over different surfaces is particularly nice.
• Writing notes or letters, and sending in the mail. It generally brings you to think of things you like about other people, which naturally tends to make you happy. Naturally, people like to receive mail, too.
• Trying to imitate the voice and tone of the dialogue of a book which you have just read.
• Looking out the window while riding the train. Did you know that you can pass by many, many things, without ever noticing them?
  
• Looking out the front window while riding the train. This is much more fun with conventional signals than with cab signalling.
• Feeding pigeons, ducks, geese, swans, crows, tits and chickadees, nuthatches, jays, crows, magpies.....
• Petting (those you can) pigeons, ducks, geese, swans, crows, tits and chickadees, nuthatches, jays, crows, magpies.....
• Having biscuits with your tea.
• Making silly animated gifs with nice messages on them.
• Taking pictures of things you find interesting, without regard to whether the picture is any good or not.
• Browsing Wikimedia Commons for pictures which nobody regarded for whether they were any good or not.
• Looking at pictures and videos of penguins.
• Baking cookies, tarts, breads etc. I had a friend with whom I baked tarts made from entirely buckwheat flour, without any sugar. They were quite nice.
• Picking berries, or fruits, from your daily environment, if they are in season. In particular, raspberries, serviceberries, and apples are really wonderful.
• Reading about a topic that interests you, until you are quite sure you have exhausted the available materials about it in your native language.
• Writing about that topic that interested you, so that it's just a bit easier for the next person to read about it.
• Having tea and biscuits with a friend.
• Playing some music and singing.
• Rewatching home movies. We tend to take many videos, but the ones that are most valuable are the most mundane.
• Making home movies. After all, what will you have to watch?
• Playing a video game, for a little while. I like to keep my friends happy in TomoColle.
• Spending time at the public library. They have the newspapers, and it's nice to keep up with the state of things, and you get to see a nice cross-section of society: playing children, boisterous youths, the quiet elderly, folks who have come in to use the computers, people learning a new skill at a class...
• Visiting a nearby town and walk around, seeing the way life looks there.
• Watching new buildings, roads, bridges, railways get built. The world changes around you faster than you think.
• Having a friend over for dinner.
• Going to a friend's for dinner.
• Eating some kind of comfort food before bed. For me, it has been thick-cut rolled oats with a bit of cinnamon, and, if feeling extravagant, a little honey.
• Eating whole foods rather than cut-up meats. For example, little crabs, sardines, anchovies, etc., which make you aware of the cost of your eating - there is life that doesn't live in a vacuum-packed chicken breast. The same applies if you stew a hen, but obviously that's far too much meat for one or two people.