The exercise comes from my current therapist- I’ve been dutifully completing the work of looking for at least one positive thing a day- no matter how small, and if that seems insurmountable: then a neutral thing that occurred.
It’s been doing quite good things for my habit of rumination and helping to overcome some of the negative overgeneralization depression whacks you over the head with: being held accountable to the task, and having someone to discuss the results with.
I’m very curious what you all would consider a ‘little win,’ since we all lead such different lives!
Today’s little win was heating up enough hot water to enjoy a proper temperature cup of coffee- I often shrug my shoulders and dump in cold water to make it up to the mark, which does the job well enough: but isn’t as pleasant as indulging in drinking something this side of burning your face off. The fog rolls in thick and heavy over our city today, and it feels extra cozy to have something pleasant in hand.
I’ve finished coding the second-to-last geographical region in my surprisingly large Inform 7 game. Once that’s done, all that remains is a feelie, a playlist, and a good deal of paratext. I expect to have a feature complete game by the end of the month.
I tried that with my husband. After a negative thought, we should «pay» with a positive one…
Positive thing of the day for me is I have the afternoon off.
Neutral could be that we went out to have lunch
What a lovely thread! I was on solo parenting duty for my one-year-old son this morning, and managed to make him French toast for breakfast – a very low-key thing, but given what an agent of chaos he can be accomplishing it on a weekday morning made me feel like a ninja.
I took a 5km walk through the local woods to the next village, just to get some fresh baked bread rolls (the fine ones here in Bavaria). Had a lovely breakfast with my wife afterwards (wife lovely as well)…
I found a new problem to fixate on for a while! Finding something challenging to work on is always a nice feeling, and a break from the more mundane tasks of grading papers and procrastinating on writing.
I made off with about 3/4 of a box of cookies after a work lunch today
More seriously, I’m trying a new medication and today was a big turning point re: side effects. The last few days have been difficult in that regard so I am very thankful that they’re subsiding. *knocks wood*
I made experimental autumnal puff pastry rolls with apple, neep*, nutmeg and sugar for the filling. I thought they would probably be terrible but they were great. Husband loved them too.
*People from non-Scottish parts of the Anglosphere may refer to this ingredient as swede or rutabaga.
Bigger wins will be coming as the day progresses, but this morning I went to the post office and successfully swapped 20 Rigid Mailers I had been mistakenly advised to buy for 20 CD Mailers – the shop’s entire stock. I usually don’t feel good about buying out an item like that, but the guy was pretty adamant that no-one was buying them and they’d soon be phased out. Note that this was the same guy who mis-advised me to buy the Rigid Mailers in the first place.
I can add one more thing. World of Horror, an episode/mission-based cosmic horror RPG with an old Mac aesthetic (1- or 2-bit graphics and an interface that looks like HyperCard) got an update on Halloween. I’ve got two hours to play tonight!
For me, today it was something big: I got to attend a private Q&A session with the narrative director and lead writer of an AAA game studio. Not naming which one, but they just released a game under a big IP. This was for the top applicants of a game writing internship program I applied to earlier this year; I didn’t get the internship, but I was in the top 6, and the studio did this wonderful thing for us. It was so cool! Hard to top for me.
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