Five Things Making Me Happy (A surprising flavor / My favorite memoirs about creativity)

I’ve found that there are three types of people in the world: those who like to go to a reunion, those who don’t like to go to a reunion, and those who go occasionally to a reunion.

A key element to happiness—perhaps the key—is strong relationships, so I’m a big fan of reunions. They help us to stay close to good friends and, even more, they help us reignite connections with people with whom we’ve fallen out of touch. They bring back memories. They remind us of our past selves. And seeing people in person is very different from looking them up online.

I just looked at my calendar and realized that between high school, college, law school, my husband Jamie’s college reunion, and two work reunions (people who clerked for Judge Pierre Leval and people who worked for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt), I’m going to six reunions this year! That’s a lot of reunions.

Onward,

5 Things Making Me Happy

I drink a lot of Diet Coke, and was intrigued when I spotted this new variety for sale in a drugstore. My experiments while writing my book Life in Five Senses taught me the fun of trying new varieties of familiar things—apples, olives, and now soda.

I love a creative memoir. I made a post about some of my favorites on Instagram, and people shared many more excellent books about creativity in the comments, so it’s worth scrolling through. Here are my choices, and I must say, I find it slightly annoying when people who are great artists in another field—such as sculpture or music—are also great writers:

Chronicles (Vol. 1) by Bob Dylan—In truth, I’m not a big fan of Bob Dylan’s music, but I love this book, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read.
Composed by Rosanne Cash—so thought-provoking. I think about passages from this book all the time.
Daybook by Anne Truitt—Several of her journals have been published, and I love them all.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix—This journal was written from hundreds of years ago, yet it resonates with me deeply.

Recently I weighed in on a new initiative that aims to fix Americans’ ‘happiness problem.’ I’m happy that people are thinking about these questions.

Happiness Hack: In this week’s podcast episode, Elizabeth and I talked about a hack for storing a particularly challenging category of sentimental items: kids’ stuffed animals. This Stuffed Animal Storage Bean Bag Chair Cover allows you to store stuffed animals in an organized and functional way. Brilliant.

Last week, the Spanish Language Edition of Life in Five Senses was released. I always enjoy hearing from people who have read one of my books in a language other than English, and to see how the book looks. Sometimes, the cover design is the same, but often it’s very different.

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This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin

PODCAST EPISODE: 482

We discuss why you might decide to train for a tough transition—perhaps for an entire year. We also revisit a listener’s response from years ago that listeners continue to comment on; it’s an idea that has deeply resonated with people. Plus we suggest an excellent hack for storing collections of stuffed animals.

Listen now >