Happy New Year! My kids went back to school today — but for how long? With the Omnicron variant here, I’m keeping low expectations for January. After all the holiday hootenanny, I suspect someone in my kids’ classes will test positive for Covid, leading to quarantining, etc.

I’m buying video games as an insurance policy on our January mental health.

In the meantime, I’m starting twenty-two projects to keep my momentum strong in 2022. Projects make me happy. I realized this when I read The How of Happiness: A New Approach To Getting The Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky. (That’s the book whose name I could not remember during the episode!) I was inspired by Gretchen Rubin to pick twenty-two projects for ’22.

I’ve already listed my projects in an earlier blog post, but I love you so I’ll list them again here:

1. Knit Christmas stockings (this won’t happen if I wait until December!)
2. Catch up on family photos albums.
3. Set the kids up with their own bedrooms.
4. Paint the kitchen cupboards.
5. “Finish” decluttering (though I realize this will be a continuous work in progress).
6. Deep clean the house.
7. Publish my first novel.
8. Write the rough draft of my second room mom novel.
9. Go boogie boarding five times.
10. Get a ping pong table.
11. Read 100 books for myself.
12. Cook with mushrooms – try twelve new recipes that involve our favorite fungi!
13. Use my button maker. (Christmas gift I bought for myself.)
14. Get a new enamel pin every month.
15. Learn how to play the Super Mario Bros. theme on the piano.
16. Create another graphics heavy book in the tradition of The Distance Learning Activity Book For Parents Just Barely Holding On To Their Last Shred of Sanity
17. Learn a tap dance routine to Footloose.
18. Decorate with pompoms.
19. Go to Hogwarts at Universal Studios with Pippa.
20. Study Carl Jung.
21. Put family pictures in seasonal frames to rotate throughout the year.
22. Get a posh trash can for the kitchen.

Thanks for listening! And reading! Or both!