your life isn’t boring. you just forgot how to enjoy things.

Today, I picked up a bouquet of fresh flowers — my first of the season.

Each Spring, this is something I look forward to.

Over the last few, there’s not been a lot of extra room in the budget, but every year, when the tulips return, I commit to finding some, because fresh flowers are a simple pleasure that I know I will delight in each time I look at them.

I used to buy into the idea that my life was boring. Or perhaps that life itself was boring, unless I consciously, constantly worked to avoid it becoming so.

In my first few years of adulthood, I had a plethora of jobs — usually 3-4 at once — and a packed schedule, booking coffee dates and plans with friends as often as I could. I would have told you that being busy was what made life interesting, perhaps even worth living.

When I look back on those years, most of the social events and long work days blur together. There are highlights and standout moments — and truly there were some great ones. But I was also perpetually exhausted, distracted, and had no idea how to feel at home in my own life or self.

These weren’t bad years. I had many, many moments of joy. But I didn’t enjoy my life.

Choosing to pursue a slower and simpler life felt scary to me for a few reasons. But in the beginning, the emotionally strongest holdup was the fear of boredom. What if this simply wasn’t enough? What was I, if not busy? Where would my daily dopamine come from if not my phone (particularly aimless scrolling + time sucking games)?

Maybe it sounds silly — but I was honestly a little freaked out. The whole concept just felt so very foreign. And to let go of the things that I knew were keeping me frantic and distracted also meant saying goodbye to the most frequent and controllable sources of dopamine in my life.

Very quickly, though, a funny thing happened:

I started waking up in the morning excited for the day.

Morning walks shifted from a chore — a “healthy habit” I was working to exercise discipline in — to a sacred ritual, peacefully engaging with the world around me before I ever engaged online.

It wasn’t foreign. It was familiar. Experiencing casual, daily joy — delighting in my own life — felt like childhood. And it was this revelation that led to the next:

My life was never boring. I just forgot how to enjoy it.

I have come to believe that the opposite of delight is not sadness, but distraction. Missing it — whatever moment you’re in. Failing to be present keeps you numb, and while for a long time that felt safer, to not feel fully whatever I was experiencing, it certainly was not better.

There is also an important conversation to be had about guilt & discomfort with feeling joy — treating it like a luxury or a reward instead of a fundamental, sacred rhythm of daily life. I have more thoughts on this coming soon.

Since slowing my internal rhythm, simplifying my life and home, creating margin in my every day, and (I truly cannot stress this enough) getting off my damn phone, it has been my absolute pleasure to discover that my life has always been full of deep, rich joyful moments. More than I ever knew. They have always been here. I simply stopped noticing them.

So I don’t just buy the fresh flowers each Spring.

I put them in the kitchen, where they are most visible to me during the day.

And I look at them. I watch how the morning light hits them — comes pouring in through our windows, emphasizing the richness of colour in each petal.

I see them open a little more each day, and then slowly start to droop and fade when their time is up.

I take too many photos from terrible angles and I don’t move the dishes in the back or the coats waiting to be hung up because this isn’t for Instagram, it’s for me, and I want to remember how this feels. This, the first tulips of Spring, is a moment I will remember and hold with me.

Some of my other favourite simple pleasures:

• the smell of fresh bread

• getting dressed and actually loving my outfit

• sunshine (any day, every day)

• the first sip of coffee every morning

• I love yous

I would love to know what moments of delight you have found and are finding still in your own life!