As I prepared to type the sentence “I love celebrating things,” I had to stop and remind myself not to be dumb. That’s like saying I love breathing or sleeping. Everyone loves celebrating things, don’t they? So let’s just say I especially love it, and will come up with darn near any excuse to do so.

This weekend, though, I had a bonafide reason to raise a glass. Early Saturday morning, I finished a rough draft of my second novel, Say Yes. (Mind you, the first book still needs work and attention, but I really wanted to finish something new before I tackled that beast again.)

Finishing this draft is cause for celebration for a few reasons beyond the obvious. (The obvious being that you’ve gotta finish the rough draft before you can move onto the next version, making it better, and eventually suitable for human consumption, pass by pass.) For one, I’m celebrating because I managed to plug away at this one without going back and self-editing almost at all. As a result, there are plot holes you could drive a trained dragon through, and continuity errors that I’ll have a good laugh about later. But that’s OK. That’s not that big a deal in rough draft territory. I’m also celebrating because I finished the book in the face of capital-letter Life Events: fights, funerals, and the Capital Fringe Festival, namely. And lastly I’m celebrating because I drafted this one in 9 months, with minimal breaks, compared to the five years it took to finish my first book (with more breaks than I could count).

There’s plenty to celebrate, in writing and beyond, and I devote a (perfectly healthy) amount of time to thinking about this and buying myself presents. There are the obvious causes for celebration: relationship anniversaries, work anniversaries, promotions, raises, birthdays, cat birthdays, hitting writing goals, and other big accomplishments. But why not dig deeper? Here are a few “milestones” I think I’ll start celebrating — just because I can.

1. When you make the perfect cup of coffee or tea: Celebrate with a chocolate almond croissant. Just hurry before your drink gets cold.
2. When your favorite artist drops their new single or album: Celebrate with a blinds-down dance party in your apartment or house.
3. When you finish a long run or workout: Celebrate with ice cream, obviously.
4. When you find a pair of comfortable heels: Celebrate by buying another pair of the same shoes because THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN EVERY DAY, people.
5. When you finally clean your gross house: Celebrate by watching no less than 5 hours of your favorite TV show on a couch not laden with dirty laundry and opened mail.
6. When you get to the metro just as the train arrives on the weekend: Celebrate by having those 17 minutes of your life back.
7. When you cook a baller meal, just for yourself: Celebrate with a bottle of wine from the upper-middle shelves.

Yup, I’d drink to that.