What Small Joy Have You Found?

Sometime during the pandemic, young adult novelist Aisha Saeed started tweeting “What small joy will you savor today?” She asks this question most days, and the answers are funny, poignant, familiar and full of hope as necessary as air in this moment. Last week she wrote: “…one thing I’ve learned with asking myself this question – small joys are there even amongst what feels like rubble.”

I started thinking about her question as we re-air our show this week “The Power and Pleasure of Joy.” It can be hard to find joy these days, and, then when we find it, to feel good about it when so many are suffering. But despite this, we are finding joy – surprising and delighting ourselves.

I asked our TTBOOK staff to give us a glimpse into what gives them joy during this time. As for me, when my kids’ schedules slowed down and I started working from home again, I turned to a project I hadn’t done in a few years – making and canning jam. Dozens of jars of ginger peach jam later, I realized the slowness of making jam gives my mind room to think about things in a dreamlike but awake state of being. And then it’s absolutely delicious.

–Shannon

It was so dark so early in January, and everything seemed so bleak. I was craving color and texture and warmth. And then I stumbled on this blog post about revisiting the potholder loom and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

So now I make potholders. On one of those ten-inch green metal squares we had as kids. It comes with a bag of stretchy cotton loops in colors like fuchsia and lime green and royal blue. There's something so satisfying about filling the grid with neat horizontal and vertical stripes, weaving the loops over and under each other, up and down, left to right. What I love most is that in just 45 minutes, start to finish, you can be holding something that's both useful and beautiful, that you made with your own two hands, something out of nothing – a way to restore a tiny bit of order and harmony to your life, one 10 x10 square at a time.

–Anne

All during COVID I would (still do) sneak out of the house three or four times a week and go for a drive. I would make a three-song Spotify playlist before I left. Sometimes I would just rock out; other times I’d listen to sad country music. The music was all over the place. But I knew all the words. Always knew the words. And I would belt them out at the top of my lungs. 

I didn't stop the car. I tried not to think. I just wanted to sing away the stress. And at times the pain. This has been a difficult time for me. Before COVID, I think I was starting to take music for granted. I fear at times I even let it be background music. But no more. My emotional healing arsenal now contains a rotating playlist of three songs. 

–Charles

Like so many others, we got a pandemic puppy. And it turned out that one of our neighbors got a puppy at exactly the same time we did. So nearly every day, our corgi, Alfie, has a vigorous romp with their labradoodle, Percy.

And while they wrestle and tumble over each other, I stand around with my neighbor, also named Steve, as we chat about everything under the sun. I hadn't known Steve that well before the pandemic, but now, we've connected in ways that wouldn't have been possible in the Before Times.

–Steve

I've been collecting and listening to albums since age nine. First on cassette, then graduating to CD and now digital music of various formats. I probably have 7,000 titles in my collection, and all of them have a story, but I recently began to reflect on the origin of this obsession.

A few months back, I started writing about my first ten music purchases. They were all cassettes, most of them are still in my collection, all of them still firmly locked in my temporal lobe. Revisiting each album inspired a series of questions: Why was young me attracted to this sound? What ties did it make to my adolescent life? How did it reflect the way pop culture presented itself to a rural Wisconsin farm kid? What doors did it unlock to the way I hear music, and the world, today?

Oftentimes, I'm caught off guard by how well they've aged. Even the most fleeting pop music is filled with a surprising amount of intent. It's why even "(Theme From) The Monkees" leaves a mark on people. You can read the first three installments at my Twitter account.

Beyond this, I also decided to fill the few remaining holes in my David Bowie bootleg collection. My dream job outside of radio is likely in music archiving and compilations, being called upon to craft an anthology using researched recording dates, concerts, studio personnel and critical re-evaluation. So that’s what I did with the Thin White Duke, assembling an eight-album box set covering his 52-year recording career. 150 songs sourced from 97 different albums, singles, LPs, cassettes, concerts and films. Want a copy? See? Obsessed.

–Joe

I've found a small joy in a very specific corner of TikTok — responses to one woman's video prompt "What's the most benign and mundane but absolutely unhinged thing you started doing the pandemic?" The woman in question eats a pickle at sunset every day. Another has started collecting sticks for unknown, possibly magical purposes. In spite of the toxicity that has developed in many digital spaces during the pandemic, wonderful weirdos on TikTok continue to use the platform to create absurd works of art in 60 second chunks.

–Mark