Please know that this is not an article about tying a pretty bow around a fresh, steaming bag of doggy poo… about putting a silver lining around a colostomy bag… about appreciating the future benefits of currently crappy hardships. No, sometimes we want to wallow in the full-on shitmanship of a full-on shitty situation, and I’m not here to bust that pity party for you, my friend. (Sorry… I guess I should’ve said poopy party. I really am just 10 going on 49.)

No, I think it’s important to acknowledge that sometimes life is just toilet-worthy. I’m not going to drag you down here with a bunch of examples (and I promise I’ll take it down a scatological notch or two), because I’m sure you have your own assortment of downer moments to deal with… but what the hell: misery sure does love company! (*Pours more Pinot*)

Here a few joy-deflated things around me these days:

• A friend is getting a divorce. She didn’t know about it until a few weeks ago, though.
• Another friend’s long-and-lustrous job is unstable, maybe even evaporating all together.
• A former client is closing her business because she can’t make ends meet in light of “these interesting times.”
• An Instagram friend shared in a DM that he is losing his eyesight at 53 and can’t drive his cherished classic car anymore.
• Some of us (WHO COULD THAT BE?) are moving our 87-year-old dads into assisted living and answering the same question every single day about how much meals cost. (Meals. Are. Part. Of. The. Package. Repeat after me: meals are part of the package.)
• Suffice it to say that you get the point? That joy can be temporarily annihilated? I don’t need to keep adding misery-laden bullet points here.

When life is feeling decidedly disastrous, we don’t want to be prematurely pumped up full of pseudo-sunshine. We don’t want to be placated (okay maybe one placating line said with a hug feels good but then you can bugger off). Manufacturing joy in the midst of sheer and utter despair feels fake… saccharine sweet… like pouring a vat of glitter all over ourselves and expecting to feel better.

It’s okay to revel in the sadness/ grief-iness/ rage-iness/ whatever-emotion-iness for a bit. Maybe don’t swim around in the sewage for weeks, but pour yourself that sloppy second glass of wine and acknowledge that life is hard and that it’s just a feature of getting to have a pulse.

Then?

Identity the smallest scintilla of joy you can generate in the midst of your current cataclysm. 

Right now.

One small thing.

Not a vat of joy, just a wee particle of it… equivalent to one particle of glitter extracted with tweezers out of a giant vat of shimmery microplastics from Hobby Lobby. (Yes—glitter, in addition to being the herpes of the arts and crafts world because you just can’t get rid of those sparkly suckers, is also problematic for the environment! But I want to use it as a dazzling metaphor so I will trudge on.)

You know when you stumble across a random speck of glitter—maybe left over from a holiday card or gift wrap, or maybe from that time your partner came home late from the strip club grocery store, or maybe just for no reason at all? The glitter reflects a twinkle of light in a way that sparks the tiniest bit of “oh!” in your somber soul… that ignites just a hint of interest and curiosity (where did this solitary piece of pink glitter come from? And what song was she dancing to when it fell off her gyrating body?)… it evokes a half-smile, it stirs the smallest reason to want to stay alive for the next five minutes. Yeah, all that from a microdot of glitter. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s all the joy you need to make today.

So I went and got glitter (shhhh… it’s on The Husband’s list of “Things that are Forever Banned from Our Household,” along with black licorice, tchotchkes, and scented candles named after abstract concepts). And then, very carefully, with the gloves we have left over from Covid (when we thought we needed to use gloves at Target to not die—remember those simpler times?), and with a pair of tweezers, I extracted a single piece of glitter and glued it to a sticky note with a dab of Krazy Glue.

The single glitter sticky reminds me to go for a bite-size bit of joy when life has dealt me a shit card, to not try and gorge at a buffet of joy when it feels absurd to go after in that moment.

Examples of single-glitter-particle joy pursuits:

• Sitting down on the floor to snuggle with the family pet, even for four minutes
• Watching a nostalgic TV show (Matlock? Emergency? Dallas? Fraggle Rock???)
• Stopping to take six deep breaths, ideally outside (sometimes 10 deep breaths is just too damned much and please tell me I’m not the only one who feels overwhelmed by all 10)
• Booking a dinner reservation into a presumably brighter future when you actually feel like going out
• Looking at photos in the depths of your phone (unless they are all of your soon-to-be ex, in which case, skip to the next bullet point, pronto)
• Googling pictures of a place you want to be/ that makes you feel inspired (I know a guy who looks up Scotland, then clicks Images, then just scrolls, looking serenely at pictures of… Scotland)
• Have a nap
• This list could go on for days…

Basically, identify in advance a list of things that bring you specks of joy. Then when life is in the crapper and you have zero energy to “get happy,” let alone figure out what might make you happy, you have a cheat sheet. On my list I have “doodle the Grim Reaper” and engaging in that little task has never not made me feel a bit energized/ less horrible.

What’s on your list of microplastic-sized-joy? Think small. One little moment of joyful relief from a down time might lead to another good moment. Or not. Maybe that one glittery moment is okay enough for today.

And guys? MEALS ARE PART OF THE PACKAGE. (Weirdly, that just gave me the speck of joy I needed.)