This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.
During my second year of college I shared a house with 7 other girls. It was fun and loud and chaotic. One of these roommates played the Sims and drove this hella loud massive old Bronco. She had an incredible laugh and was older than me. Sometimes she would let me keep her people alive and over winter break or some extended time when she was gone and I was not she let me play and make up my own people.
Fun game, but easy for me to lose hours inside of, so I stopped playing.
One thing about that silly game stays in my brain though, the needs levels, and how the fake little person made of code that you’re creating an adventurous life full of entertaining choices and skill accumulation, they have these levels on the side of the screen for how hungry they are, how dirty, tired, grumpy, all of that.
Not very plot happy of me but I really enjoyed making all those levels full and green and watching the sim get that lime green shimmer all over themselves (this is the skin of a killer, Bella) from being content and happy and then they’d bounce around in a good mood for a while.
I think we’re like that.
We gotta figure out our own little sim shimmer inducing activities.
A delight day isn’t a treat yourself day. It’s not a partying day, it’s not a splurge day. It’s precise stacking of a few things that leave you feeling recharged in body, mind, and soul, in the ways that work for you, all done intentionally so you can live better and get all those good levels sorted out again.
Like a reset day but with a little more intention and less chores.
Here’s my formula or recipe for a delight day -
Something that nourishes you physically in food + something that nourishes you physically in movement + some place that nourishes your soul to be present there + some optional activities that nourish your mind + peace to be able to hear what you need and how you’re doing = a delight day.
For me this looks like driving to the beach (usually half moon bay), getting some tacos or a burrito from this spot a few blocks from where I like to park, eating half the food when I get there (usually I plan it so I arrive around noon-ish), taking a really long walk along the water as long as I need and want to, letting the ocean do what it does to me (it really is one of my most healing places I never want to be farther than a day trip possibility from it), and leaving whenever I’m ready.
I will bring a journal - something to write with and something to write on, always - a book or two, and a blanket to lay on. I don’t always even use any of those but the options are necessary. When I head home, I do so before 5 so I can hit the farm stand that’s on the way out that has such excellent peas I always stop and et a big big bag and eat them on the way home.
This has never NOT worked for me. My delight day.
It fills up my soul and leaves me replenished. I feel a glowy chill calm competence spending the day that way, not exhausted, overheated, and tired.
So what kind of a thing could you do?
Anything at all. You don’t have to drive anywhere for it, you don’t even have to leave your house, it’s a really adaptable formula.
Consider, when planning or designing yours, what tendernesses can you pair up that you enjoy, that are out of the house – or maybe one that is – that always make you glad to have done?
A lunch of good food had in a park with a book?
A hike to a cool place and a meditation at the top?
Something that refills the sparking bits of you without simultaneously depleting any resources.
Do your delight day alone.
Tell about it later, but it’s important to do these alone.
This might be the hardest part, the being alone part. It’s important. It helps you understand how to be alone. It makes you be your own company for a while. It also, by being your own company for a while in nice ways, helps you start to take some ownership for your soul, for your levels, for your gratitude, for your personhood in the world, for your joy and delight meters, and helps you see the texture of your brilliant life again.
I always always feel an appreciation for the world and my place in it, a gratitude for my own existence, for the restaurant for the farm stand for the ways in which I have grown and for that which is still in front of me, I sleep better, and feel a stillness in my core after a delight day done right.
That’s what you’re after.
I want to hear about it if you do one and are inclined to share.
ilysm, see ya Monday,
xoxo-Marian