This week, we celebrated our puppy Taffy’s one-year anniversary with our family. In truth, we’d forgotten how much trouble a puppy can be—but she’s totally worth it. Even our ten-year-old dog Barnaby seems to enjoy her now, though he was a bit annoyed by her puppy energy at the beginning.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
I visit the Metropolitan Museum every day, and I particularly love the Egyptian Wing. I’m very interested in the divinities of ancient Egypt, and I particularly love Ma’at, who I consider to be the patron of the Upholder Tendency. Ma’at is the personification of cosmic balance, order, law, justice, and harmony. She’s often represented by a stylized ostrich feather, which I see everywhere as I walk through the Met’s galleries. And I recently spotted Ma’at’s symbol outside a gas station in Queens.
As someone who studies happiness, I’m very concerned about the growing loneliness in the world, so I was very pleased to talk to the reporter who was covering an important issue: “There’s a silent epidemic in our workplaces, and WFH is to blame.”
I love everything about candy, except for eating it. I love the colors, the varieties—and the ingenuity of candy. I was so curious to try a freeze-dried Tootsie Roll that I broke my usual no-sugar rule to give it a taste. Very interesting texture!
I love children’s literature, and I have a big collection of Oz books. I was interested to watch this three-minute video about two illustrators who depicted Oz—W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill. (I much prefer Neill myself, especially his “floaty” pictures.) The video made me curious to learn more about why Baum decided to switch from Denslow to Neill, after the first book—the first and only book illustrated by Denslow—had been so successful, and that question led me to this video.
If you’re in a spring cleaning mood, and struggle to deal with sentimental clutter, check out my article with nine practical tips for handling items that carry a lot of emotional weight. (I’ve been thinking about this issue in the context of the empty nest lately, as I work on my empty-nest/open-door project.)
This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 583
Too Much Clutter? Searching for Lost Items? Try These Hacks. Plus a Self-Knowledge Question.
INTERVIEW
Jodi Kantor
Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-author of She Said, which chronicled her investigation into Harvey Weinstein and helped ignite the worldwide #MeToo reckoning. Her new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work, is available now.
Q: Can you suggest something we might try to help ourselves to become happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative?
Buy a cheap, thin notebook. Keep it on you. Every day, make a practice of writing down which actions you enjoy and which ones you hate, whose company you like and whose you can’t stand. Do that for a few months and you may come to know yourself in a new way. For young people who don’t know what field they want to answer, this can be an important step towards finding their craft. But really, it’s helpful for anyone.
Q: Do you have a Secret of Adulthood? A lesson you’ve learned from life the hard way; something you’d tell your younger self?
So many. A favorite is: Most Messes Can Be Cleaned Up. (When I was younger, if I made a mistake I’d think all was lost; it took me longer to see the potential for repair.) Also: No One Ever Goes Away. That’s why I tell my daughter she needs to be gracious to everyone– she’s going to see them again when she least expects it.
But since my book is about careers, I’d say: Relax about coherence. Not every dot of your experience or line on your resume is going to connect. Trying too hard to tell a straight line of a story can distort it. Everyone contains contradictions; have faith that other people will understand yours.
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
No phone for the first 30 minutes of the day. Reading, yoga, staring out the window, whatever.
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful?
My book encourages people, especially young people, to maintain a sense of aspiration about work even in this very dark and cynical time. We can’t give up on work– it’s our engine of progress, and our stake in it is collective.
As I was writing it, my college-age daughter sent me this passage from an interview with Robert Gottlieb, the former editor of The New Yorker. I’m including it here because it’s the best quote I’ve ever seen about love of work. Speaking with the Paris Review, Gottlieb said:
“What is it that impels this act of editing? I know that in my case it’s not merely about words.
Whatever I look at, whatever I encounter, I want it to be good—whether it’s what you’re wearing, or how the restaurant has laid the table, or what’s going on on stage, or what the president said last night, or how two people are talking to each other at a bus stop. I don’t want to interfere with it or control it, exactly—I want it to work, I want it to be happy, I want it to come out right. If I hadn’t gone into publishing, I might have been a psychoanalyst; I might have been, I think, a rabbi, if I’d been at all religious. My impulse to make things good, and to make good things better, is almost ungovernable. I suppose it’s lucky I found a wholesome outlet for it.”
Isn’t that a great quote about love of work, and isn’t that what we all want for ourselves, work as connection and calling?
Q: Has a book ever changed your life?
Monthly at least!
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