It’s been a full year of writing these passion newsletters. I don’t know if I’ve grown or changed all that much, but now every week I’ll keep track of the things I like, even if some weeks I think, is it ok to write about kerrygold butter again? that’s all I like. I guess certain weeks are harder than others. I’m not a positive or optimistic person by nature so this has, in some ways, been a grand attempt at rewiring.
Thanks to those of you who have submitted passions throughout the year! They’re enlightening and surprising and sometimes even alarming. In 2024, I’ll continue to publish this newsletter so keep the passions coming.
And now for the much awaited LITTLEST PASSIONS OF 2023:
Evan: My small passion is snuggling with my dog after I get home from work. There's a special time after work after I'm done walking him and feeding him dinner that we both just hop into bed and I scroll on my phone while petting him. It's especially wonderful in the winter when it's dark out and I get extra cozy to escape from the cold.
Alicia: Waking up within 30 seconds before my alarm goes off. really feels like I've won at sleeping.
Aparna: The first sip or bite of an afternoon snack and when you get home from the airport.
Line: My tiny passion is seeing a milkweed seed floating on a breeze. Godspeed little fella. May you one day feed many caterpillars.
Hayley: Drink umbrellas. Few things give me hope like a drink umbrella. Someone thought, geez it'd be cute if my drink had a little umbrella and then FOLLOWED-THROUGH to make that happen for all of us. What a champ! It couldn't have been easy—they look so fragile and the tiny components seem super fiddly—but that little cocktail maverick persevered in the name of joy, whimsy and making fun things instead of just thinking about them. I like living in a world where the drink umbrella exists.
Molly: My smallest passion is the way the moon looked tonight (Friday, December 15) while I was in bumper-to-bumper BQE traffic. This was around 6:30 pm. The moon was elegant and slim, yet still so bright against a black sky, hanging above the skyline. It made me think about how we live on a planet with a moon and that's weird. Also, it was freaking beautiful and I felt lucky to be looking at it.
Lauren: My small pleasure today was when I was driving to visit my mom in the hospital - I was eating a toasted and buttered everything bagel and coffee. That was a pleasure on its own but it amplified when I started thinking about the name “everything” bagels. Like how cool is it that they were like what flavor bagel should we make? I don’t know, how about just.. everything?! And then they just started shaking on the flavors. Poppyseeds AND sesame seeds?! Yeah, man! Garlic? Hell ya!! Onion? Go for it!
Dre: My small passion is remembering my dreams. I usually can't do it, so on the rare days when I wake up and can articulate to my boyfriend every strange and special decision my weird subconscious made during the night, it feels like I won the nighttime brain game.
Lisa: Freeing ingrown hairs from my skin prison
Marc: My micropassion is: every Friday afternoon, I read Jo’s Passions, have a great laugh, and a 26 minute nap.
Emily: happy accident - the two notes that make a perfect transition between the d chord and the a minor chord when I’m practicing finger picking, and that are a lucky result of my poor technique. lighting a vanilla cupcake candle - because I’m American and I can do what I want (I have been living in France for 18 years and the French disdain vanilla cupcake scent). Rice Krispie treats - along the same sticking it to the French lines, I made Rice Krispie treats for the first time in 27 years to bring to an office party, fully expecting the French colleagues to say « too sweet, » or « interesting…? cereal…? » or similar, and get to eat them all myself, but they were a hit (the texture was the major selling point?!)! Edible shiny powder - I put edible gold dust on the tops of the Rice Krispie treats and they looked fancy.
Marisa: My micro-passion: the toasty feeling of the sun on my face while I sit at a red light in my kind of warm car on a frosty cold New England morning. For a few seconds, I’m on the beach somewhere.
Joe: I wore an easy-to-take-off warm jacket to work the other day instead of my usual harder-to-remove thin hoodie, but the train was too hot! No worries, off comes the jacket and I am the perfect temperature. Easy clothes!
Zygy: The ding I hear at the subway turnstile when my Metro card works and I can walk through. Getting out of bed, slipping into my slippers and walking: Don’t have to bend down, tie or Velcro anything, scrunch my toes, or put on socks. Start over: Some TV shows give you the option of going back to the beginning of the show even though you turned it on in the middle. Closed Captioning on TV: I used to only need this for British shows. Now that I’m older and don’t hear that welll I use it all the time. When a sad story about a dog is on the news my wife covers her eyes and doesn’t want to hear it. I mute it and read the captions to myself. If I’m mad at her I tell her the story.
Lauren: 1. Talking to my dog long enough that he goes from tilting his head to fully riled up and jumping. 2. Staff recommends sections in bookstores. 3. A good sauce. I will plan a meal around the sauce. 4. Light through trees, it can really turn a day around.
Gaby: My passion is wearing fuzzy slippers around the house. I got them at the dollar store - they are simple but make me feel so cozy and warm in the winter. No more accidentally stepping in puddles or wet spots around the house and getting my feet wet. I'm not sure how I ever lived in my drafty wood floor house without them.
Richael: I love climbing into a bed with fresh sheets. On laundry day, if I remember, I try to take the sheets out of the dryer while they’re still warm, and make the bed up all nice and tight so the sheets are smooth. At bedtime, even though I’m a morning shower-er, I do a quick scrub so I’m as clean as the sheets when I shimmy my way under the covers. It makes my bedroom feel like a hotel for one night only.
Ellie: The wonderful sound of my dog satisfactorily smacking her lips as I tell her goodnight & rub her belly one last time for the night.
Christina: I have a wonderful blanket that we call "the cozy blanket" in my two children, my dog AND my cat are obsessed with it. No one is allowed to use it without me, so they all wait around for me to pull it out. It is now peak cozy blanket weather, and I love how no matter where I am, if I am under the blanket, it's time to cuddle with nearly everyone in my house! Even if I am outside on the porch which features another passion of mine: my porch xmas tree. (My husband has a robe for which he feels passion which is a good thing because there is never any room under the cozy blanket for him)
Brad: I'm passionate about my willow tree. The way it sways tranquilly in the wind and then in the winter how it looks like Sideshow Bob's skeleton.
Ashley: Really pink sunrises. I will stop everything to fully savor a pink sunrise.
Felicia: A mini passion: cooking without a recipe. Truly thrilling.
Caro: I recently upgraded from my COVID-era single-ply toilet paper (the good stuff was just so hard to come by and then I got used to it!) to something way fancier, and it's oddly thrilling! Did you know they now make the cushiony kind of toilet paper with whimsical, wavy perforations?! I first encountered this fancy TP while dog-sitting and thought it was pretty extra. But now that I've treated myself and my holiday guests to the same in my own home, it's a small but genuine source of happiness. Every time I tear off a square (which is not really a square, but some playful, wavy-edged shape that defies my basic geometry knowledge), I can't help but smile and wonder who came up with this?! I've never been so grateful to have an overactive bladder, or for a mysterious Charmin marketing executive! Genius!"
Micaela: I am passionate about watching full episodes of British panel show Taskmaster on Youtube. You can really watch a lot at once. All the comedians on each series are so funny. They are all doing inane things, talking about it, and awarded points. Makes for great TV.
Amy: My mini-passion is the mobile game Cribbage with Grandpas. It's a game where you cribbage with a bevy of customizable cartoon grandpas (as the name implies). Though he regularly kicks my butt in cribbage, my lil' cartoon grandpa asks me how my day is going in between hands. I know he's not real, but I love him anyway.
Kristen: Jo, my passion right now is getting FaceTime calls from my husband at the grocery store, where he stands amongst people just trying to shop around him and shows me 20 different hams to make sure I cosign the right one. The other day, he called me to make sure I was on board with cinnamon rolls from the bakery (always am), but out of a bizarre sense of confidence did NOT call me when he saw the store only had the maxi pads I specifically told him were the wrong ones. He came home with the wrong pads and the right cinnamon rolls, so I didn't care.
Reading all these at once makes it all seem like the transcript of a montage in a Michel Gondry film. Not bad!
Happy new year,
Jo