Aug 1, 2024 2 min read The Joy Diaries

In a Flash

One year of The Joy Diaries! Thank you for reading and supporting creative efforts!

Flashes in July

Huzzah! Celebration today! My website and this monthly newsletter have been alive for one YEAR! I can hardly believe how fast this year of writing has gone. In the time that it took me to design the site, publish my first newsletter (and first book!), and make it to this moment, we moved homes three times, my father passed away, my mother broke her hip, and the house my teenage self was raised in was cleaned out, put on the market, and sold. Of course, so many other (good) things happened, but our savior brains (you know, they want to keep you alive and well) focus on the trauma-infused moments. Brains are adrenaline junkies that keep predicting and providing lots of thought distortions for humans to work through. 😆

I am delighted that The Joy Diaries has made it to this moment. I am thrilled to have a readership like you. I thank you for sitting down to read this little missive monthly. I am grateful for your continued support. 🙏🏼

This year, I had no firm idea what would come of the monthly newsletter, though I had very ambitious plans, many of which have yet to come into being because life had a way of placing a few obstacles in my way. As past and present stoics argue, the obstacle is the way. Okay, sure. But obstacles are no fun. What is satisfying is finally navigating around the obstacle somehow. It is always sweeter on the other side of the boulder. Confidence boosts confidence.

Though I have yet to attain a tattoo and would argue my skin is likely getting past the age at which I should apply fresh ink, I think I finally figured out what I would get on opposing shoulders: 1) The Taoist symbol of balance (yin-yang) through a torii gate on one-side, and 2) a diminutive phoenix rising. Because there must be balance, and time and time again, one must rise from the ashes. We stumble, we fall. It hurts. Everybody hurts. But we rise. Again. And again.

My shot describing my (future) tattoos to OpenAI

On the Horizon

It's hard to see what lies ahead, but I hope next year will bring more joy and creative projects to fruition. If you are reading this from your phone or email server, you may not have noticed that I have redesigned my homepage and tweaked a few things for this coming year. Namely, I am building an online (and in-person) community for joy-seekers like me who want to continue developing their skills to live their best lives. I am designing more in-person events for connection and skill-building, and I am in the ideation stage of another short book for educators. You can check out my redesign HERE.

Join me this year. Let's seek and make joy-infused moments together. Let's resist entropy and fear. I just read this today in one of the books from my summer list, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and it is resonating with me right now: