Delights: Joy In The Mundane

I can’t imagine celebrating my birthday without birthday cake. Preferably moist vanilla sponge topped with buttercream frosting and some decorations on top made of blobs of more buttercream frosting. Vanilla ice cream is optional. I don’t know what it is, but that is hands down my favorite kind of celebration cake. Perhaps that makes me a vanilla kind of guy, …

It took me a lot of years to view what I do as a craft and not just another task. Craftsmanship is not something you hear people talk about a lot these days, but you certainly know it when you see it. In fact, we all instinctively do business with people who have a high opinion of what they do. …

Never, ever doubt the power saying “Thank You.” It always a good time to remind ourselves it costs us nothing to be grateful and it often pays dividends we cannot measure. I feel a lightness in my spirit when I hear someone say “Thank You” and I go out of my way to do so whenever I can. Whether it …

Between asleep and awake is where I have found a happy place. Unfettered by natural rules such as gravity, time and space, my imagination runs free in this place. Sometimes, my thoughts take flight and I visit strange and wondrous sites. Sometimes, I visit the past and just occasionally, I get veiled glimpses of what I believe the future may …

In 1949, J.B. Priestley published a book of essays called Delight which contained over 100 short pieces each of which captured the essence of something he found delightful in his life. Today, we might say he was counting his blessings, but I think he was also pointing out the good found in the world around us and reminding his readers …