Author: Neil Pasricha

We’ve all been there.

Whether you left the keys in your car, let a dorm door slam behind you, or just came home late without a key, we feel your pain, we feel your pain, we feel your pain.

Now after the panic drains and you stop going insane it’s time to get your brain together by slipping off your sneakers, pulling a ski mask over your face, and grabbing a giant empty sack with a dollar sign stamped across it. Yes, you’re a cat burglar and it’s time to bust into your own joint.

Unlocked windows, jimmied doorknobs, and bent wire hangers all help get the job done in style. Swing pet doors could also come in handy. Also! Be sure to try and fail to wedge a Mastercard in the doorjam for a couple minutes while saying “I saw this in a movie once”, just for the full experience.

Breaking into your own place after realizing you locked yourself out gives you a smirking sense of jewel thieving satisfaction. You get the high of being a bank robber without the guilt of walking around with a coat full of diamonds.

Let’s just call it a win win.

Let’s just call it

AWESOME!

— Email message —

“While walking along the cliff at the end of the world… alright, the Coastal Path of the most southern point in Cornwall, UK… I stumbled across this. It makes me smile every time I see it.” – June

Once upon a time you had a baby.

Over those first few years you had ups and down, good times and bad, lots of laughs and lots of tears. You spooned applesauce off chins, you washed off their skin, and you walked them to their first day of school.

And as they grow up and grow older, as they grow taller and as they grow bolder, it’s beautiful seeing their tiny eyes sparkle with little pops of understanding of the world around them.

It’s a beautiful moment when your little one takes a book from your hand … and bumbles through a story that they want to share with you.

Once upon a time you read to your baby.

And now they’re reading to you.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

It’s a beautiful day.

Don’t let it get away.

Now whether you’re holding hands in church, running with your dog at the park, just taking a break from the world, or just sleeping in till it’s dark, well … Sunday’s a good time to relax and enjoy some smaller moments:

1. Worship the Sun and ice cream. The word Sunday was originally named after “Sun’s Day” — just like Monday was “Moon’s Day”, Saturday was “Saturn’s Day.” Now it’s come to include giant bowls of ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and nuts. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a chance to worship both on a wobbly picnic table on some sandy grass by the water.

2. Couch potatoes unite. Sunday is the perfect time to practice the ancient lost art of Completely Lazing Around. Curl up on the futon with your boyfriend during the ballgame, pop open a pizza box with your pals for kickoff, or flip the recliner beside Grandpa for a marathon session of bird chirps and whispers during golf.

3. I’ve got all my sisters with me. After wading through work and before diving back in again, it’s time to pause and enjoy quality time with your friends and family. Maybe it’s a holiday dinner at Grandma’s, maybe you’re visiting dad in the home, maybe you’re dining out at college, or maybe you’re laughing with friends on the phone.

Yes, sometimes if you’re lucky the world slows down a bit on Sundays. Today we say when those highways unjam, when phones quit their buzzing, when your tensions untangle … it’s time for some Sunday loving.

AWESOME!

—

Congratulations to two longtime supporters of 1000 Awesome Things on their new books!

First up is the always impressive Gretchen Rubin! She has a great new book out called Better Than Before. It’s a follow-up to The Happiness Project and is an instant bestseller in its first weeks out. Congrats, Gretchen!

Second up is Jeremy Gutsche! He runs Trendhunter.com and and just launched Better and Faster. Another instant bestseller. Two books with better in their name? We are all improving every day.

Hope you like the books!

Photos from: Sarah Ross

I’d make a bad waiter.

Yeah, balancing wobbly trays of wet glasses, slipping and sliding on slick kitchen floors, and rushing for refills after refills is just way above my abilities. Of course, sometimes when you hit your local eating trough you meet other waiters and waitresses over their head too. Like for instance:

1. No-Notepad Nathan. This is the guy who listens to everyone’s order without writing anything down. At first, you’re really impressed, but the wow factor disappears when all the meals come out wrong.

2. Disappearing Diane. She’s a great waitress during drinks and dinner, but after that — poof! — it’s like a cloud of smoke explodes and she just vanishes. Dirty dishes linger and you’re stuck walking around aimlessly, shoulder-tapping anyone in an apron looking for the bill.

3. Spilly Sonia. Watch out when that chicken noodle soup, soda refill, or gravy bowl arrives. Sonia is a bit of a klutz so you can expect lots of sauce smears, rogue fries, and wet glasses.

Yes, eating out ain’t easy and you never know what you’re gonna get. But that’s what makes it so great when you score a good one. Waiters and waitresses who know the menu really well help give us great times, great moments, and great nights. Confident recommendations, cautions against bad picks, and portion size estimates help us out.

So! To all those waiters and waitresses out there who know the menu really well … thanks for being there.

We hereby declare you

AWESOME!

—

Congratulations to two longtime supporters of 1000 Awesome Things on their new books!

First up is the always impressive Gretchen Rubin! She has a great new book out called Better Than Before. It’s a follow-up to The Happiness Project and is an instant bestseller in its first weeks out. Congrats, Gretchen!

Second up is Jeremy Gutsche! He runs Trendhunter.com and and just launched Better and Faster. Another instant bestseller. Two books with better in their name? We are all improving every day.

Hope you like the books!

Photos from: here and here

Wait, wait, wait.

Let me get this straight.

Giant hunks of metal weighing half a million pounds soar in the air way above the clouds over deep dark oceans to deliver people to distant lands thousands of miles away?

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

In your car you used to have all this lying around: an empty Doritos bag, a napkin, a parking stub, and a coffee cup.

Now you just have a coffee cup.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Boom-badda, boom-badda.

Back when I was a wee lad I remember begging my parents for some newfangled gadget from Radio Shack that let me play LCD checkers in the back of the station wagon. It was like Game Boy’s Great Uncle or something and after I fought with scissors to break it out of its frozen-carbonite-like plastic shell I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this thing is really light.”

Sure enough, a couple dozen King Me’s later in the back of our bumpy wagon and this E-crap of Terribleness went kaput. I guess it was essentially plastic-wrapped air with a rusty circuit board wedged inside and couldn’t keep up with my killer moves. But it got me thinking that maybe there’s just something better about things that are really, really heavy…

• A pile of blankets on top of you. Because nothing beats getting buried under the hot fuzz on a cold night.

• Pens. There is a direct relationship with the heaviness of your pen and its quality. Bottom of the barrel is those flimsy four inch plastic ones that clip onto your mini golf card. Top of the heap is the fat one the size of a hot dog sitting beside the wedding reception guest book.

• Gold bars. When your bank account is loaded with tipsy pyramids of gold bars you’re either an ancient Egyptian King, Veronica Lodge’s dad, or Scrooge McDuck. Either way, gold’s been valuable since before recorded history for coins, jewelry, and arts.

• The Earth. It really is a great planet. And sure, we may have problems, but have you tried living anywhere else? The commute is always a nightmare and don’t get me started on the lack of water or air.

• Things made of glass. Listen up, plastic Jeep windows, Styrofoam cups, and the stained yogurt container I’m heating up this leftover ravioli in right now — your days are numbered. Because there’s something to be said for going heavy and going back to glass for the win.

• Old toys from your Grandpa’s basement. When you come across an old dump truck or a heavy wood paddle and ball it’s time to get down with a high quality afternoon. Keep fishing through boxes and you might find a solid metal xylophone or a doll who’s rock hard head could double as a battering ram.

 

• Ununoctium. Poor Mendeleev didn’t leave spots for this synthetic element — also know as last square on The Periodic Table and the heaviest element on Earth. Packing 118 protons into an atom isn’t easy but it makes for a fun challenge for nerds.

• Babies. Yes, it’s a great sign when babies come out heavy and healthy and then keep growing and growing and growing and growing until they turn into me and you.

• Old, dangerous playground equipment. We’ve chatted before about how metal see-saws, hot slides, and rusty Big Spinners beat plastic rocking horses two feet off the ground any day.

• Unwrapped Christmas presents. Heavy mystery boxes crank up that exciting what-could-this-be factor on Christmas morning.

Yes, in these days of bendable, breakable, and throwaway there’s something nice about anything really, really heavy. Heavy means this action figure won’t break next week. Heavy means this omelet is packed with cheese. And maybe heavy is just a sign of substance, a sign of comfort, and a sign something was put together by someone who cared.

AWESOME!

—

Congratulations to two longtime supporters of 1000 Awesome Things on their new books!

First up is the always impressive Gretchen Rubin! She has a great new book out called Better Than Before. It’s a follow-up to The Happiness Project and is an instant bestseller in its first weeks out. Congrats, Gretchen!

Second up is Jeremy Gutsche! He runs Trendhunter.com and and just launched Better and Faster. Another instant bestseller. Two books with better in their name? We are all improving every day.

Hope you like the books!

Photos from: here, here, here, here, and here

Big news, big news.

I’ve got a new girlfriend.

Her name is Leslie and she’s a kindergarten teacher.

Now, one of the things I love about her is swapping stories after work because we do such different things. I work an office job in the suburbs so I tell horror stories of yellow-font-on-white-background Powerpoints while she talks about teaching kids to tie their shoes.

A few weeks back she asked her students what they wanted to be when they grew up.

One boy wanted to be a veterinarian, one girl wanted to be a scientist, and then a shy girl got all excited, her eyes lit up, and she waved both arms in the sky until Leslie answered.

“Yes Jessica, what do you want to be?”

“Oh, oh, oh!!! I want to be a farm!!!”

Now, Leslie didn’t want to kill the kid’s creativity despite the challenges of morphing into a few hundred acres of soybean plantations so she softly challenged back a bit to see where she could lead the conversation.

“Jessica, I love farms too! There’s horses and barns and trucks! There are people driving tractors, people milking cows, and people feeding chickens. Do you want to be one of those people!?”

Jessica’s eyebrows scrunched up and she squeezed her tiny nose like a pig before looking up in a head-twisty daze.

“It’s hard to be a farm because a farm is a place,” Leslie continued. “It’s somewhere we find a lot of different things. You could be something at a farm, though. Let’s say for a second you couldn’t be a farm. Is there anything else you’d want to be?”

Jessica put her head in her hands for a few seconds before getting really, really excited again. Her mouth dropped open, her eyeballs popped wide, and she started flapping her arms like wings. She started breathing really fast as her body boiled to the brim with adrenaline and her brain fired electrons in all directions. Then she looked up at Leslie with a skyrocketing energy and the blood-boiling force of a thousand trains before jumping off the carpet and yelling out again.

“Oh, oh, oh!!!”

“I want to be a pumpkin!!!”

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

There’s always one.

It’s the beer belly guy with the megaphone, the face-painted lady with the dangly earrings, or the boozy teens with the letters on their chests. These folks don’t rest and we all can attest that they make our entire fan experience better than the best.

The loudest guy at the game cheers the crowd. The loudest guy at the game makes the home fans proud.

The loudest guy at the game … is just really damn loud.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

It’s good getting along with Future You.

Whether it’s all-caps screaming to pick up the milk, terse finger-wagging reminding you to hit the gym, or polite memos to your Work Self to staple that important pamphlet tomorrow, well the point is that you’re making plans and pledging to get the job done.

And there are variations on the theme such as The Time-Delayed Send, The Bizarro Self Voicemail, or the classic 10 Exclamation Mark Surprise.

You have one new message.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here