7 techniques for joy
Getting it & spreading it in 2026 and beyond
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New Year’s Resolutions: some hardened skeptics like to dismiss them as delusional hogwash.
We make resolutions, these people will tell you, moreso to launder our regrets from the past year than to establish realistic ambitions for the new one. “If you really wanted to start running every day,” they say, “you wouldn’t need a symbolic calendar date to do it. You’d just start running.”
Here at Blackbird Spyplane, we’re more resolution-agnostic. If, by this point in your life, you’ve determined that your own January 1st vows to do x, y and z have been functionally theatrical — full of good intentions that nonetheless tend to evanesce by January 12th — and if, as a result, you resolve to find other paths to betterment, fair enough.
On the other hand, there is something genuinely special, and full of potential, about this time of year. This goes beyond the purely symbolic. A buddy of ours put it well the other day when he likened the late-December-early-January stretch to the Covid lockdowns in microcosm: habituated behaviors and autopilot processes grind to a halt, not just individually but globally. We become dislodged from our routines, and in the gap that opens up between us & them, we glimpse a real opportunity to reconsider and reconstitute the ways we live, with more perspective and consideration than usual.
In today’s Plane we’re targeting that gap, not with resolutions but with 7 Techniques for Joy you can deploy in 2026 and beyond.
Some of these techniques include specific, excellent things we link to, including pajamas and sleep masks, butter dishes and homage Calder pins. Many involve little to no acquisition whatsoever.
Let’s get to it —
1. Give a friend $10-$20 cash in a gift bag
A friend recently asked me and Erin to pick up a prescription for her. To show her appreciation, and to reimburse us for the copay, she put a book, two pieces of festively foil-wrapped milk chocolate, and three loose $5 bills in a little string-handled gift bag.
When is the last time you received a little cadeau of cash in a gift bag?
Were you 8? 13?
The shock of pleasure we felt upon the sight of this modest tableau — deeply thrilling when we encounter it in childhood, sadly absent from adulthood — was immense. It struck us that, the next time you’re wondering what gift to give a friend, you could do worse than to bless them with $10 - $20 in loose folded bills (or, if you prefer a more tidy style, in crisp bills tucked inside a card). Ideally you will deliver these alongside two pieces of festively foil-wrapped milk chocolate, and perhaps a book, or socks, etc., too.
But the cash is what supplies the frisson, especially as society continues on its cursed cashless path.
1a. Draw birthday cards for the people you love
Quickly reiterating something we discussed here: “To buy a card for somebody you care about is, however well-intentioned, is to put something inert, disenchanted and disposable in between you, your feelings, and the person you feel them for.”
1b. Give gifts off-cycle
There is a special delight, as previously discussed here, in gifts that you get for someone, or that someone gets for you, not because it’s Christmas or your birthday but simply because it’s whatever random day it is and you know them well and saw something you thought would be perfect for them (like a bag with two chocolates and three fives).
2. Curate a little gallery outside your home
We’re all likely accustomed at this point to the sight of Little Lending Libraries in our neighborhoods. We enjoy seeing people take books from these vitrines, we enjoy finding and putting books in them, too. Much like community fridges, these are blessed counters to propertyrightscucked mindset.
Along similar lines, Erin and I have noticed a rise near us in various Little Galleries, including a Little Fiber Arts Gallery (where you might see a quilt on display) a Little Plant Propagation Gallery (sedum cuttings), and a Little Diorama Gallery:
This is a great idea worth imitating and spreading far & wide. Cop or build a simple vitrine, and go Modest Funky Mary Boone (M.F.M.B.) Mode on the community.
3. Visit the huge Alexander Calder exhibition opening at the cursed-but-you-gotta-hand-it-to-them-when-it-comes-to-curatorial-firepower Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris later this year
April 15 through August 16, 2026 to be precise. And in the meantime, cop yourself a surprisingly inexpensive hand-formed, hammered-brass Calder-homage pin, custom-made with your initials, from the talented metalsmith Erin wrote about here.
4. Buy nice salted butter and keep a chunk on deck at room temperature in a good-looking butter dish
Last year, a reporter asked me and Erin to define “luxury.” I replied with something long-winded when two words would have done the trick: buttered toast.
A life that consists of no greater luxury than a bedspread of butter on warm bread is as luxurious as life need be. However, if the butter is fresh out of the refrigerator, it fights you: it breaks into chunks and shards, it stutters, skips and scrapes stubbornly across the bread…. damn.
And so, last month, after meaning to do this forever, I finally placed an order for a lidded butter dish, made by one of our favorite ceramicists, who’s releasing a new batch of them this month: