Seasonal joy lists

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In this episode, we’re diving into the concept of Seasonal Joy Lists. This is an activity I was doing fairly regularly, around once a quarter for a couple of years, but it fell by the wayside last year when I moved house. Essentially, you pick a number of activities to do purely for joy (no productivity or to-do list items!) in the next few weeks or months (you pick the time frame) and then you make a concerted effort to make time and space to do them. You might have come across this concept framed as ‘Bucket Lists’ or similar, I prefer ‘joy list’ because it implies less…death, which is a bit of a joy buzzkill tbh.

This is another episode inspired by the A Beautiful Mess girls, they talk about it on their podcast here, and have printables on their website here. I’ve never personally used their printables, but they look very pretty and it would be nice to have a physical copy on your fridge or in your office. I personally find writing and sharing my joy list items on my blog is a great way to hold myself accountable. It’s harder to procrastinate something I’ve announced I’ll do on the internet!

I like to structure my joy lists around the seasons, partly so I can plan activities around the weather, and partly because a ‘season’ is roughly 12 weeks, which feels a manageable amount of time for planning.

Looking back on the blog, my last seasonal joy list update was April of last year, talking about my Winter joy list. I never set a Spring list, because I got wrapped up in the process of selling our flat and moving city. It’s been a real emotional rollercoaster, the last 9-12 months, and I still feel a lot of grief and homesickness for our old lives in Edinburgh. As much as I’m loving our new house, and especially the garden, it takes time to settle into a new place. We were in Edinburgh for around 18 years, so in a way I’m not surprised I still miss it. I thought reviving the seasonal joy lists might be a nice way to make space for activities that have no productivity element, aren’t essential to house renovations or related to work in any way. I’m hoping to use them as a way of exploring my new environment, and making space for trips to places that are a bit more out of the way, or involve a degree of planning. I’m finding it very easy at the moment to spend all my free time stripping wallpaper, or digging my garden, both of which are enjoyable in their own ways, but are also on the productivity spectrum.

I haven’t decided yet what I’ll be doing for my Spring list, but I’ll be blogging about it here when I’ve made plans!