Memoir Monday #48: Simple pleasures

Hello, Happy Day

Previously, I talked about sadness and today I want to talk about pleasure. I will stir my mind and, like an alphabet soup, I will randomly reveal all those simple day-to-day actions that stimulate my senses.

You are all welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

I breathe and sigh...

The dawn wind on my washed face. It's a caress from God and tells me the day will be worth it, sometimes it's also a drop of chance, but it makes me feel on the right side of the road.

A planned or spontaneous routine to exfoliate the skin. My mind processes this act as a ritual to prolong youth, while we wait for the advances in technology, or if it's true all that new beauty gurus say, the magic of resveratrol and natural collagen formulas. Two days after my beauty session, I can see in the mirror, signs that I am a day younger than yesterday, like Benjamin Button, but without going to the extreme of becoming a baby.

A massage. I'll use a computer term: “reset”. A massage that starts at the shoulders, done by someone with blessed hands... that's levitating, letting go of all the sacks of wet vegetables on your back in one breath. The first time I received a good massage it was like getting to know a new dimension of pleasure that I didn't know existed. From that moment on I understood how important it is to have a chiropractor, a physiatrist, in your schedule and pay him a visit at the right time.

Also, a pleasure that I enjoy a lot since I discovered it, is to massage my head with a wonderful invention, like a spider-shaped brush that I bought on a trip to the Caribbean coast, I do not know what it is called, nothing compares to the feeling of using it for the first time, but it is a first class anti-stress method.

Sleep. Resting indeed, in itself, is a universal pleasure, but there is nothing like sleeping deeply after a few days of insomnia due to anxiety, is to understand the phrase that says “The calm after the storm”. That is how I began to appreciate what true rest means.

Thinking before speaking. Yes it is a pleasure, a strength that I achieved in the most sensitive and empirical years, many times I was a fish that died through my mouth, I was a slave of my words, from those difficult moments a resolute personality was born from me, now I have an agility to think and choose between using a generic answer or keeping silent, at the end of the day when I do recapitulations, in most cases I am left with the satisfaction that what came out of my mouth was to help, to relieve and to build.

Cooking. A talent I developed during pandemic confinement, too, thanks to all that we can accomplish with the help of social media, this is pure math, I just followed step-by-step instructions with just the right portions, and so I made my first biscotti, my first roast, my first black beans and more, all approved with good marks by my family.

A very funny anecdote is that, many times, intuitively, I tried to make black beans, because I love them, but there was something that always went wrong, it turns out that when they need more water in cooking, I used warm water and when I finally looked for a tutorial, the expert said, “If you see that more water is needed, it has to be hot because otherwise the beans are overcooked”. It was a laugh-out-loud moment.

Learning. For more than 5 years I have been working online, and I have learned many things, for example, Hive was a challenge that fortunately I took, with this platform I learned programming language, graphic design, web design, audio and video editing, marketing, introduction to cryptocurrencies and many more things. I am a curious person. The last training I signed up for was in the field of nutrition to maintain ideal weight, caloric deficit, macronutrients and related knowledge.

Singing. One of the most beautiful arts I learned, a draining therapy. I love music, I always go back to the records I listened to in my adolescence, I sang them at the top of my lungs and very out of tune, but I went up steps, I signed up for singing lessons, there I found a professional who helped me a lot with the use of neurolinguistic programming, he channeled my insecurities and I began to develop my ear, then, to put the musical notes in place, I am proud of the road traveled and the goals achieved. I want to release an album with a concept for nightclubs before I turn 40. I want to sing in shows of all sizes, it is a pending wish to be crossed off my bucket list.

Listen to music. I am sensitive to music, I have been a follower of the music industry movement for as long as I can remember, I like to listen to new records and review them, I like to play at being a concept consultant for new artists. This is part of my world, I am a fan of award shows, festivals of unreleased songs. Something that gives me a lot of pleasure is listening to a song and activating the Shazam app to find out more about the artist. The songs I listen to the most on loop, I'm sure most of them, I discovered them with Shazam.