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There’s something quiet and defiant about choosing joy in the morning.
Not the sweeping, cinematic kind of joy you chase with credit cards or weekends away.
Not the kind you post about.
But the slow kind—
the kind that comes with the right spread of apricot jam on a single slice of warm bread.
I’ve done this for years.
It started without ceremony.
A leftover jar in a sublet kitchen in Ljubljana,
one winter morning in a room too small for anything except a bed, a kettle, and an old tin toaster that sparked when you looked at it wrong.
I remember it clearly because I didn’t expect anything from that day.
I had no plans. No ambition.
Just toast. And jam.
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The Unremarkable Becomes the Sacred
It sounds absurd to write about this.
I know.
But that’s the thing—
The absurd is where joy lives.
Every time I open a fresh jar of jam,
there’s this moment of pause—
the subtle pop of the seal breaking,
the thick amber sheen at the top catching a slant of morning light.
I don’t eat it quickly.
I spread it with care.
I sit down.
No phone.
No background noise.
Just the slow bite of sweet and sour,
like memory itself crystallized in fruit.
Some mornings, I cry without knowing why.
Not sadness exactly—
More like something unspoken loosening inside me.
—
From Small Things, A Rhythm
What began as nothing has become everything.
It teaches me to:
- Slow down when everything says rush.
- Choose sweetness even when life is salt.
- Find rhythm in the ritual, not the result.
- Remember that simplicity isn’t lack—it’s precision.
I’ve done this in Japan, in Basel, in a cheap hostel in Birmingham with terrible tea and brilliant sunrises.
Always with the same intention:
To begin the day with one thing that reminds me I’m not just surviving it.
I’m inhabiting it.
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The Wabi-Sabi of a Toasted Life
Wabi-sabi says:
Imperfect things, tended to daily, become beautiful.
And so I tend to my mornings.
Not with grand affirmations or productivity hacks.
Just toast.
And apricot jam.
And stillness.
Because when life gets too much—
when news cycles spin and algorithms seduce and our dreams feel like rusted-out cars on cinderblocks—
what brings me back isn’t more ambition.
It’s less.
One small joy, chosen deliberately.
—
If you’re lost,
don’t reach for the next big thing.
Reach for your version of apricot jam.
One tiny thing done every day
until it anchors you back to yourself.
That’s how joy arrives.
On quiet feet.
Through a cracked window.
In a spoonful of something golden.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just true.
And just enough.
life 