One of my goals for this year is to document 365 days of joy. Every day I post a photo on instagram of something that brought me joy that day. I include a caption and the hash tag #ayearofjoy2015. I probably annoy the crap out of my friends posing this stuff, but they're going to have to deal with it. At the end of the year, Chatbooks will print all 365 pages for $40. Worth it.
Today, on the 21st day of doing this, I was really struggling to find the joy. I kept asking myself all day, "What could I possibly post about today?" The kids bickered and fought all afternoon. I had to nag and nag to get them to listen to me. There were messes everywhere. So like a genius, I decided to go all out and make an elaborate dinner that took 2 hours to make and then it came out of the oven tasting like vinegar (sweet and sour chicken from pinterest) right when it was time to eat so I had to scramble and be creative to figure out how to save it. (Eliana ended up loving the "saved" version so it was a victory.) On top of that, the last several clients I've given photos to have barely even said thank you and have been so nonverbal about how they feel about their photos that I can only assume they hated them. That's such a crappy feeling when I spend HOURS editing (time away from my family or household duties), swapping heads so we get the best smiles in one pic, smoothing everyone's skin just to be nice so they feel better about their appearance, even making them appear thinner. After many recent experiences of not hearing back from clients after they downloaded their photos, I was feeling very frustrated today. (Clearly, since I just spent a paragraph venting about it.) All of that added together left me super crabby and not fun to be around. Finally, just before bedtime, we gathered around Marcelo in the living room to do some family scripture reading. I suddenly felt so dumb and bratty for being such a grump. I looked at all the kids listening to Marcelo read and I just thought, "Here's my joy." I'm way too blessed to be whining about such insignificant stuff. What I wrote on my instagram caption was "I love my family. I love God. Everything else is nowhere near as bad as I sometimes let my brain make it seem." I love that this little project of mine is helping me focus on the good. There is so so so much good.
