A decade ago, I started a simple list.

We were driving back from visiting my family in Texas during the holidays, which is always among the best things I do each year, and I was feeling sentimental. I started jotting down bits and pieces from the past year. I called it the “Best of 2010” and came up with a top 10 list of just a few words -- a destination we traveled to, a visit from people I love -- my highlight reel of the moments when I had felt most joyous.

Looking at that list and reliving those moments felt so great that it prompted me to make another one. I wrote the names of the people who had been especially vital that year -- the people who showed up for me when I needed them the most. I titled that list simply “Team.”

I resolved to find a way to thank those people, sooner rather than later.

The whole exercise probably took less than half an hour, a way to kill time on a long road trip. But it felt like a satisfying way to end one chapter and start the next: focused on the good and feeling grateful.

I decided I would try to make my “Best of” and “Team” lists an annual ritual. I had started it as an email draft to myself, and I eventually compiled it in a Google doc. When something particularly wonderful would happen during the year, I’d open the doc and make a note of it. At the end of the next year, I was culling a work-in-progress down to the most essential moments, rather than starting from scratch.

So now, I have a full decade of those moments and names to reflect upon. I’ll confess that it’s a little more than 100 in total, because some years I couldn’t bring myself to limit it to 10.

I’ve created a longitudinal dataset of my own happiness.

Indulge my nerdiness while I analyze it.

Some expected themes emerged: vacations and holidays with families, celebrations like weddings, visits from friends, special sporting events and concerts, new experiences and milestones for our kids. Obviously, Big Moments aren’t always good times and laughs. But the patina of nostalgia smooths over the stress and conflict that we may have experienced at the time. I often rely on a measure of distance to help bake in the fuzzy, warm feelings and minimize whatever chaos and discord bubbled in the background.

Selective amnesia goes a long way toward familial harmony, I’ve learned.

I discovered some surprises in my dataset, too. The times my work connected with readers, helped someone in a difficult situation or was recognized by others consistently brought me joy over the years. It’s a good reminder that finding meaning and purpose in your work is key to personal happiness.

Another repeat item involved taking on difficult challenges -- like running a marathon, making a film, applying for fellowships or managing a house renovation -- and just being able to complete it. I didn’t win any races or film awards, but working on something hard and being able to finish it ended up on my top 10 list nearly every year. The funny thing is, when I’m in the depths of a project like those, I’m usually miserable -- stressed and full of despair and regret for taking it on.

This turned out to be a great way to check in with myself and my relationships. It’s given me a roadmap on how to prioritize in the future. And the older I get, the nicer it is to have a handy timeline of life’s bright spots.

It’s also been a way to reset my perspective at the start of each year. I read depressing and enraging news stories every single day, and I’ve found a way to make an antidote for myself.

May the next decade be just as list-worthy.

If you’re single during the holidays, someone is bound to point it out. It might be your great-aunt Bertha, your overly concerned mother or even a well-intentioned married friend.

But being alone is better than being miserable in a relationship or suffering through a bad date. To prove this, I surveyed a selection of A-lister singles: all attractive, intelligent, funny people. My interviewees were a writer, a graduate student, a former television news anchor and a lawyer. Two men and two women, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-40s, all willing to share their hilarious bad-date experiences.

The next time someone gives you a sympathetic, pitying or snide comment, laugh and be thankful.

The lawyer was working in a Latin American country when he met a bombshell. She didn’t speak any English, but his Spanish was good enough to score a date. They decided to go to a casino. She was driving them there when another car pulled up directly behind them.

The woman started muttering, slammed the gas pedal in her SUV and took off. She sped down a major thoroughfare, going at least 90 mph, blowing through intersections.

The lawyer started negotiating and pleading -- while wondering if they were being pursued by some underworld mafia hitmen -- but to no avail, as the chase continued. She turned into a secluded residential area, the other car still in hot pursuit. They barely missed a pedestrian and almost flipped the Montero.

The chase continued for about 15 minutes, until he insisted that she pull over at a gas station.

Both vehicles parked, and a blond woman jumped out of the other car and started screaming. The lawyer only caught a few words of the rapid-fire exchange.

“They were some sort of middle-school rivals,” he recalled. “I thought she was going to bust my window out.”

Finally, the screaming match ended. His date declared the other woman crazy, got back in the car, and they resumed their drive to the casino.

The writer noticed him at a Super Bowl party and found him intriguing. He asked for her number, which led to a few engaging phone conversations. She agreed to a date.

They were having dinner at a romantic restaurant when she asked, “So, what do you do for fun?”

“I have a confession: I really like to sing karaoke,” he said.

She tried to cover her surprise. (“That’s my worst nightmare,” she explained to me. “I don’t even watch ‘American Idol.’“)

Her nightmare was about to get much worse.

He asked her about her favorite songs, and she mentioned Stevie Wonder’s classic “They Won’t Go When I Go.”

To her surprise, the date started singing “Superstition” at the table. Loudly. He may have been channeling Rupert Everett or Tom Cruise, but it did not unfold like a restaurant singalong in the movies. No one else joined in.

Undeterred, he tried again. The first song was followed by another R&B ballad. Then a country-western number.

There may have been another song in the set, but the writer seems to have blocked out memories past that point.

She tried to interrupt him after a stanza ended, but he could not be stopped.

“I have not been that mortified in a very long time,” she said. “He wouldn’t stop singing.”

The former TV news anchor said it was hard to get back into the dating pool after a 16-year marriage. So after his divorce, he ventured into the world of online dating. He met a seemingly nice woman, and they arranged to meet for dinner.

He expected a 34-year-old brunette, about 5-foot-6.

He didn’t expect she would be six months pregnant.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “But you were so nice. I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t show up.”

Unsure of the protocol in such a situation, he stuck around for dinner and tried to make the best of it.

“I never saw her again,” the anchor said, “but I did get pictures of a newborn emailed to me a few months later.”

The graduate student was watching a movie with her family and a young man who was courting her. She was sitting in a slightly awkward position, on a couch across from her date. She shifted, and to her horror, a rather loud sound escaped from her.

“I was so shocked,” she recalled.

The noise startled her father, who immediately tried to take the fall.

“Uhhh, I have a bad pain in my stomach. I just had some fiber,” he fibbed. “At this age, it’s hard to control.”

The boy called him out.

“No, sir,” he said. “It came from there,” pointing in her direction.

With no other options (or dignity) remaining, she laughed.

“My poor, poor father. Him taking responsibility was almost the worst part,” she said. “I’m still haunted.”

When Angela Hoepfner found her teenage son in the kitchen on Dec. 2, two years ago, she thought she had walked into a crime scene. She called 911 and ran outside the house.

Her memory from that day is fuzzy in places, but she must have also called her mother and sisters. Family members started showing up at her home.

The police told her it wasn’t a homicide, and it wasn’t an accident.

Scott, her 16-year-old son, couldn’t be saved.

Angela sat in her car in shock for hours until the funeral home came to pick up Scott’s body.

“My world blew up in one day,” she said. “My everything was gone.”

Scott played varsity football as a high-school junior. He was a happy-go-lucky kid who sang in the shower and talked about joining the Army to work with military dogs after graduating. He adored his own dogs -- Micah, Mojo and Mastiff -- who followed him around the house and slept with him at night. He volunteered at the local dog shelter and with Sweet Celebrations, a nonprofit that hosts birthday parties for homeless children.

He earned Eagle Scout at 14, and loved to crack jokes.

“He made it hard to parent sometimes, because he was so funny,” Angela said. A single mother since he was born, her world revolved around her son. His artwork hung all over the walls of their house.

They had both watched the popular Netflix series “13 Reasons Why,” a teen drama about a girl who takes her own life. They talked about it briefly afterward.

“That’s stupid,” he said. “I don’t know why anybody would do that.”

Less than six months later, he was gone.

Angela has racked her brain for a single clue, but nothing comes up.

What did she miss?

“I beat myself up every day of what I could have done differently,” she said.

But her son was talking about their Christmas plans for later that month. He was popular. He wasn’t bullied. In fact, he was the kind of kid who would stand up for someone else getting teased.

More than 1,000 people showed up for his funeral. They shared her shock.

“If Scott can’t make it in this world, I don’t know how I can,” one of his friends said to her. The words cut through her like a knife.

No other parents should have to endure this hell, she thought.

Why hadn’t Scott’s school warned parents that the youth suicide rate is at an all-time high? Why didn’t anyone tell her about the sharp rise in suicide among teenage boys?

She worries about his friends and other vulnerable kids. She tried to get the school to talk about Scott, but they refused, saying they didn’t want to glorify the way he died.

Angela talks about him whenever she can. She tells parents to talk with their kids, even the ones who seem OK, about suicide. After all, her son was the strong one, the one with so many plans and adventures ahead.

“I talked about suicide with my son once, and that was it, because I thought he was happy and everything was fine,” she said.

Angela made a pact with her sister to go somewhere beautiful and see something magical every Dec. 2. This year, they picked Fiji. Before she left, Angela asked close friend Tonya Ehlert to do something in Scott’s memory while she was gone. Ehlert came up with the idea of passing out cards with Scott’s photo that ask the recipients to do a random act of kindness. She wanted to attach a peanut butter cup -- Scott’s favorite -- to each card.

Angela took it a step further. She raised enough money to give away 150 Caniac Combos -- Scott’s favorite meal -- at fried-chicken chain Raising Cane’s. After the restaurant’s manager heard the plan, he donated an extra 50 meals.

A local print shop donated 300 cards, and the project was a Go. On Dec. 2, about 15 family friends showed up at the restaurant to hand out cards, peanut butter cups and free meals.

In Fiji, Angela read texts from Scott’s friends about the acts of kindness they were doing in his memory. She wonders if the people who got the cards will pass them forward, and how far his memory will ripple.

Secretly, she fears that her son could be forgotten.

Scott would leave a trail when he got home; Angela would trip over his shoes or backpack on the ground. She says it still feels like he’s away at camp and might walk in the door any moment.

Angela moved to a new house the day after Scott died. Whenever the school bus passed by their new house, the pups would run to the window and look for Scott. They did that every day for more than a year, she says.

It’s taken her nearly two years to find a purpose in her grief. She started a foundation in Scott’s name to promote small acts of kindness: buying someone a meal, holding a door open, reaching out to someone who is struggling.

She thinks about what Scott’s legacy will be.

“It’s time to channel my grief into spreading some love,” she said, “because Scott would want me to.”