160416 - Kickstart!
I was talking to Panda last night, and in between talking and laughing and dozing off he suggested that I try the "101 Things I Think About" challenge and the #100happydays challenge.
What're these challenges about, you ask? It's simple - the #100happydays challenge requires you to find something that makes you happy, and you have to keep this up for 100 days. Sure, it's easy enough in the first week or so, because you find so many things that make you happy - your friends, your cat, your family, so on and so forth (#blessed, amirite?).
The real challenge begins after you run out of all the big things to be happy for, and you have to start looking for smaller things, simpler things. This challenge has actually been around for a while - I remember seeing some friends participating in this a year or so ago - but hey, better late than never. Most do the #100happydays challenge on social media like Instagram because it's a lot easier to take a picture of the thing that makes you happy and write something about it.
As for the "101 Things I Think About" challenge, in my opinion it's a little more of a writing challenge because you're kind of supposed to write a bit about something you think about each day. It sounds a little like a daily prompt kind of thing - take something you think about for the day and write something about it. Sounds fun, no?
I'm game to do these challenges, but I don't think I'll post the #100happydays challenge up onto Instagram - I mean, what's the point in shoving all this down everyone else's throats and annoying them? I'll keep them here on my blog, so bear with me!
(It also gives me a good reason to write a little something every day, so bonus!)
#100happydays - DAY 1
I have this habit where I absolutely have to have a keychain of sorts on my phone - in a way, it's kind of like identification, because in this way I can easily tell my phone apart from other phones in case of some kind of mix-up. In another way, it's just a habit and I've gotten very used to having a keychain on my phone, so going without one almost feels as though I'm leaving my phone naked.
I'm really fond of this keychain - I bought her the last time I was in Hokkaido, and she's been with me for quite a while now! It's comforting to have her around, honestly - she looks so cute, and she's honestly the first thing I see every morning.
101 Things I Think About - DAY 1
I have a cup of coffee every morning.
It's nothing fancy, just some 2-in-1 coffee powder that I pour into a mug and mix with hot water, but I really need it to start my morning because I'm not the best morning person around.
Some will sneer at the fact that I drink instant coffee mix (not freshly-ground coffee beans, the nerve!), but ahh I'm no coffee connoisseur. I won't lie - I really appreciate this mug of cheap coffee powder, and it's what wakes me up in the morning.
(This and a metric fuckton of music, I should say. I honestly can't wake up otherwise.)
The funny thing about coffee is that it never works when I need it to - the irony is that I drink it when I want to perk up a little and it ends up making me feel relaxed and sleepy. Conversely, it wakes me up when I try to follow this thread of logic and drink it to feel relaxed.
Coffee oh coffee, you have a perverse sense of humour but I love you all the same.
It's impossible for me to just drink coffee - I have to look at it first. There's a saying about how we eat with our eyes first, and I firmly believe in that when it comes to coffee. You don't have to be an expert or a gourmet to appreciate the humble cuppa sitting in front of you, really.
It's simple. When you have a cup of coffee sitting in front of you, don't just rush to drink from it.
Look at it first.
Is there coffee art? If there is, what does it look like? Use your eyes to drink first, to appreciate the art - did you know that the colours in the art change colour over time? It's a very subtle thing, but over time you do notice the difference. I didn't know about this until the first time I forgot to drink my coffee (I left it sitting there while I worked and forgot to drink it until I'd noticed it'd gone stone cold), and now I keep an eye out for it every time.
If your coffee has milk in it, use your eyes to trace the swirls that the milk makes in the coffee. Observe how the colours clash and meet and mix, and eventually turn two - the stout black of coffee and the creamy white of milk - into one. Follow the lines that twirl and dance around in the cup - are they fast? Slow? How do they make you feel?
Smell the coffee. I don't mean to stick your nose into the cup and sniff it, I mean to let the scent of the coffee waft upwards and toward you - just let the steam carry the scent of the coffee, let yourself enjoy the sweetly familiar aroma that comes from coffee beans and milk and sugar and whatever else you might choose to add into the beverage.
And when you have appreciated your coffee in both its appearance and scent, that's when you drink the coffee. Let the bitter richness of the brew slide from the tip of your tongue to the very back of your throat, let your entire body be infused with either the heat from the hot beverage or the icy tingle of the cold.
Maybe it's a foolish thing to do, to wax lyrical over a cup of coffee when I barely know what I'm talking about, and quite a few people I know have told me that there's something not quite right with me, to do so much for a simple cup of coffee. I've been told that it's nonsensical, that it's pretentious, that it's pure unadulterated bullshit.
But this foolish thing makes me happy, and it's what I do when I need to take a break from work sometimes - I sometimes get so busy that I forget to eat, but when I make time for a cuppa I try to appreciate it as much as I can.
What're these challenges about, you ask? It's simple - the #100happydays challenge requires you to find something that makes you happy, and you have to keep this up for 100 days. Sure, it's easy enough in the first week or so, because you find so many things that make you happy - your friends, your cat, your family, so on and so forth (#blessed, amirite?).
The real challenge begins after you run out of all the big things to be happy for, and you have to start looking for smaller things, simpler things. This challenge has actually been around for a while - I remember seeing some friends participating in this a year or so ago - but hey, better late than never. Most do the #100happydays challenge on social media like Instagram because it's a lot easier to take a picture of the thing that makes you happy and write something about it.
As for the "101 Things I Think About" challenge, in my opinion it's a little more of a writing challenge because you're kind of supposed to write a bit about something you think about each day. It sounds a little like a daily prompt kind of thing - take something you think about for the day and write something about it. Sounds fun, no?
I'm game to do these challenges, but I don't think I'll post the #100happydays challenge up onto Instagram - I mean, what's the point in shoving all this down everyone else's throats and annoying them? I'll keep them here on my blog, so bear with me!
(It also gives me a good reason to write a little something every day, so bonus!)
#100happydays - DAY 1
I have this habit where I absolutely have to have a keychain of sorts on my phone - in a way, it's kind of like identification, because in this way I can easily tell my phone apart from other phones in case of some kind of mix-up. In another way, it's just a habit and I've gotten very used to having a keychain on my phone, so going without one almost feels as though I'm leaving my phone naked.
I'm really fond of this keychain - I bought her the last time I was in Hokkaido, and she's been with me for quite a while now! It's comforting to have her around, honestly - she looks so cute, and she's honestly the first thing I see every morning.
101 Things I Think About - DAY 1
I have a cup of coffee every morning.
It's nothing fancy, just some 2-in-1 coffee powder that I pour into a mug and mix with hot water, but I really need it to start my morning because I'm not the best morning person around.
Some will sneer at the fact that I drink instant coffee mix (not freshly-ground coffee beans, the nerve!), but ahh I'm no coffee connoisseur. I won't lie - I really appreciate this mug of cheap coffee powder, and it's what wakes me up in the morning.
(This and a metric fuckton of music, I should say. I honestly can't wake up otherwise.)
The funny thing about coffee is that it never works when I need it to - the irony is that I drink it when I want to perk up a little and it ends up making me feel relaxed and sleepy. Conversely, it wakes me up when I try to follow this thread of logic and drink it to feel relaxed.
Coffee oh coffee, you have a perverse sense of humour but I love you all the same.
It's impossible for me to just drink coffee - I have to look at it first. There's a saying about how we eat with our eyes first, and I firmly believe in that when it comes to coffee. You don't have to be an expert or a gourmet to appreciate the humble cuppa sitting in front of you, really.
It's simple. When you have a cup of coffee sitting in front of you, don't just rush to drink from it.
Look at it first.
Is there coffee art? If there is, what does it look like? Use your eyes to drink first, to appreciate the art - did you know that the colours in the art change colour over time? It's a very subtle thing, but over time you do notice the difference. I didn't know about this until the first time I forgot to drink my coffee (I left it sitting there while I worked and forgot to drink it until I'd noticed it'd gone stone cold), and now I keep an eye out for it every time.
If your coffee has milk in it, use your eyes to trace the swirls that the milk makes in the coffee. Observe how the colours clash and meet and mix, and eventually turn two - the stout black of coffee and the creamy white of milk - into one. Follow the lines that twirl and dance around in the cup - are they fast? Slow? How do they make you feel?
Smell the coffee. I don't mean to stick your nose into the cup and sniff it, I mean to let the scent of the coffee waft upwards and toward you - just let the steam carry the scent of the coffee, let yourself enjoy the sweetly familiar aroma that comes from coffee beans and milk and sugar and whatever else you might choose to add into the beverage.
And when you have appreciated your coffee in both its appearance and scent, that's when you drink the coffee. Let the bitter richness of the brew slide from the tip of your tongue to the very back of your throat, let your entire body be infused with either the heat from the hot beverage or the icy tingle of the cold.
Maybe it's a foolish thing to do, to wax lyrical over a cup of coffee when I barely know what I'm talking about, and quite a few people I know have told me that there's something not quite right with me, to do so much for a simple cup of coffee. I've been told that it's nonsensical, that it's pretentious, that it's pure unadulterated bullshit.
But this foolish thing makes me happy, and it's what I do when I need to take a break from work sometimes - I sometimes get so busy that I forget to eat, but when I make time for a cuppa I try to appreciate it as much as I can.
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