Joy by degrees: Don't save your stickers

Cliche? Yes. True? Also yes.

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. As always, it’s unedited. If you like/need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it.)

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

When I was a kid, I loved stickers. Big shiny ones, tiny little ones, rows and rows of gold stars and the holy grail: scratch’n’sniff stickers.

Any time I got a sheet of them — for my birthday, as a treat at the shops, in a show bag, at the back of activity books — I would tuck them away in a special drawer, waiting for the day I’d finally use them.

Because you couldn’t just use them willy-nilly. Oh, no. Stickers were Special Occasion Only. They were awesome, pretty and, most importantly, finite.

I knew that once a sticker was peeled off its backing sheet, stuck on the page and admired for a moment, it was done. No longer usable, it stayed in place, whether I was happy with that placement or not. Because, if I tried to peel it off the page and re-stick it, I was likely to peel the paper away too — leaving me with both a ripped page and a useless sticker.

So, just to be safe, I left them on their backing paper and tucked them away for another day. For a project that was worth it. For something I’d never regret.

When I was a teenager and being forced to clean up my dismally untidy room making good choices about my personal space, I found these stickers, jammed up in the back of my drawer, crinkled and faded.

There were hundreds of them. Big shiny ones, tiny little ones, rows and rows of gold stars and yes, even some scratch’n’sniffs. But the scent was long gone and their adhesive backs had all started to unstick.

I’d waited too long.

As a kid, I had assumed I could keep these precious little bits of paper forever, that I could keep their promise of a special day to come, so long as I didn’t use them. But stuff doesn’t work like that.

Jumpers get attacked by moths. A teacup gets broken. That special olive oil goes rancid. And yes, stickers lose their stick.

What I wish I had done was use those stickers with joyful abandon. I wish I scratched them and breathed in their weird bubblegum smell until there was none left. I wish I used those gold stars to decorate a night sky so full of light that it illuminated my young face. I wish I had made my family and friends birthday cards with dozens, no, hundreds of stickers so they could know just how much I loved them — look! I’m using my stickers! for you! because you’re the best! — and that the only regret I had was that I didn’t have more of them to share.

But I didn’t. Because I was a cautious kid. A worry-filled kid. A kid pre-emptively rifling through regrets, trying to stop them from ever coming true.

It’s the same reason I didn’t use my favourite textas, only to find them dried out years later. The same reason I used to have a pile of beautiful notebooks sitting empty on a shelf. The same reason the handmade candles my niece gave me last year sit on my desk, unburnt.

I didn’t want to waste them on a picture that wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want the words to be boring or meandering or useless. I didn’t want to burn them for a moment that didn’t seem special enough.

But joy doesn’t live in things not-done. Joy can’t be found in a box of dried-up textas or unburnt candles. And because this term is all about joy — finding it, cultivating it, digging deep and finding a subterranean stream of it — I want to encourage myself, and you, if this cautious inner-child resonates, to use your stickers.

• Drink the special tea.

• Burn the fancy candle.

• Use your Nan’s nice cups for your morning coffee.

• Set the table with the “good” cutlery and use it to eat mac and cheese or pancakes. Better yet, use them every day, always.

• Draw a wildly colourful picture with those beautiful pens you’ve got tucked away. Then give it to someone.

• Wear the lipstick you set aside for special occasions. The perfume too.

• Take that stationery set you’ve had for years and write a letter to someone you love. You won’t ruin it with your handwriting.

• That delicious jam you bought on a road-trip last year? Eat it. Every morning.

• Use those watercolour paints languishing in the cupboard.

• The air dry clay? Make something with it and keep it where you can see it.

• If you have a favourite dress, wear it to do the groceries. Or to the movies.

• Write in that notebook you’ve been keeping for an unspecified project.

• Use that fancy hand cream.

• While you’re at it, jump in that muddy puddle, climb the tree, lay on the grass and feel the sun on your face.

We hold on to these things in the hope that one day we will deserve them, that our words or efforts or achievements will be worthy enough to mark the occasion with something so special.

We hold onto them for the perfect time, the perfect idea, the perfect moment. As though being alive isn’t perfect enough.

I know it’s cliché and I know there’s so many reasons we can give ourselves — good, solid reasons even — as to why it doesn’t apply to us, not right now. But I keep coming back to the feeling of loss I had as a teenager, when I realised I couldn’t use those stickers anymore. It was small, but it was sharp. Sharp enough to remember twenty-five years later.

I don’t want more of that. I don’t want to discover, yet again, that I had something of joy and beauty at my fingertips, and let it slip by because I was too afraid to use it all up.

I want more full pages and wax-dripped jars. I want hand-made birthday cards and grass-stained jeans. And those things can only be found in their doing.

Joy isn’t in that drawer full of stickers. It’s in using them.

So, let’s use them. Whenever the mood strikes. With wild abandon if possible. Let’s enjoy the rush and embrace the delight of living in the moment.

When was the last time you used something special, just because?

If you’re looking for inspiration to use your stickers, check out this post from

Ali Griffin Vingiano

at Little Things: SOMEBODY BURNED MY $200 CANDLE (AND HERE’S WHAT I LEARNED)

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For those of you who have been with me for a long time, you might have recognised some of this letter from about ten years ago. I woke up thinking about it a few weeks back and decided to refresh it. As you know, I’m currently on medical leave, and really appreciate being able to share re-visited posts like this alongside new letters while I recover. I’m not going to be across comments as much as normal, but I will read them as I’m able.

Until next time, take good care,
Brooke xx