Two years ago this week, it was decreed by Stephen Thompson and his fellow podcast overlords at NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour that in honor of their show’s anniversary, July 16, the Sunday nearest to that date was to be designated as “Appreciation Day”:
“What made the most sense for our anniversary was an episode focusing on various forms of appreciation, seeing as how PCHH is already built largely around the people and stuff making us happy on any given day. I proposed — and hereby propose again — the creation of a new holiday I’m calling “Appreciation Day,” on which each and every world citizen takes the time to say the nicest possible thing to each of the treasured people who surround us.
“The idea isn’t to fish for compliments, or to damn the little-liked with faint praise, or to fall back on the joke-cracking that’s etched into each individual strand of our DNA; it’s to simply say the nicest thing you can truthfully say to each person you know. It’s a perfect project to carry out on social media such as Twitter, where the 140-character limit — combined with the username of the person you’re praising and the hashtag #appreciationday — enforces the kind of concise sincerity that can be crafted quickly. After all, you’ve got a lot of people to praise on our makeshift holiday, and we want you to get to all of them.”
Check your calendar. Today’s the Sunday closest to July 16, so go forth and appreciate! I’ll get us started with a couple of appreciative shout-outs of my own, along the lines of the regular PCHH wrap-up feature, “What’s Making Us Happy This Week.”
A Good Reading (Half) Year. I’ve given more than half the books I’ve read so far this year four stars or better on Goodreads, and am right on track with my 2013 Reading Challenge goal, to boot.
And yet, in this same year. I’ve had two two-star reads and my first official DNF since starting this blog more than six years ago…but I appreciate those too. (There’s something to be said for knowing what you like…and for giving something that you really didn’t think you’d like a chance to change your mind, even if it didn’t succeed.) It’s been an especially good year with audiobooks, so in addition to the authors, I’ve got to give some appreciation to some fine narrators too–although in a few cases, they’re the same people. And since I have to find these books–or find out about them, at least–somehow, I appreciate all that Shelf Awareness, She Reads, TLC Book Tours, BlogHer, and my fellow book bloggers do to enable this little addiction of mine.
A Vacation Rejuvenation. The “vacation” part of my summer happened early, but it’s been great to come back from it and still be mostly caught up on things work-wise! Coming back to a repainted, refurnished, and rearranged office seems to be helping me stay on track, too, and I’m very appreciative of the people at my office who made all that happen while I was away.
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| My office, my photos (collaged with Diptic) |
One more thing I’m appreciating–a quiet weekend that’s too hot for doing much other than some reading, maybe some writing, and some hanging around the house! I’m starting on The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay for a TLC Book Tour date in two weeks, and have returned to The Age Of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker on the iPad–I started it a while back, but then put it on hold. Now that I’m back to it, I think it may go quickly. I’m in between audiobooks at the moment.
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