Month of Joy: Fate/Grand Order by Chrysoula Tzavelas
I thought hard about what I wanted to write about for the Month of Joy but eventually I knew what it had to be: the game called Fate/Grand Order. It’s a little silly, it’s a little weird, but oh my gosh, especially right now as the first major story arc closes out, it brings me so MUCH joy. Fate/Grand Order is nominally a mobile game from the Fate franchise. You know, that Japanese thing where King Arthur is a girl and very few of the characters are original? Perhaps when you first heard of it, like me, you rolled your eyes, completely uninterested in yet another bizarre Japanese harem idea. I totally did that!
Month of Joy: Maker Space by Mary Anne Mohanraj
There was a moment in grad school. Kevin and I had split up and I was desperately broken-hearted. I’d been getting up at 4 a.m. every morning to an alarm because it was the best time for me to concentrate, when the world was dark and still, writing by the light of a candle. I’d gotten about halfway through drafting Bodies in Motion at that point; I had been working so hard, for so long. I loved the book, but I was otherwise very tired and very sad. I cried all the time. There came a day when I just couldn’t stare at the computer screen any longer. I found myself — and I honestly don’t even remember making the decision to go — at the art store, ringing up $200 of supplies (money I didn’t really have, but I just didn’t care). I came home and I made things — candles and collages mostly. They weren’t very good but I needed to do something that wasn’t just brain work, that didn’t require so much deliberate thought. I needed to use my hands. It helped. (My mother still has the candle I made her that year. She thinks it is too pretty to light it.)
Month of Joy: Putting Ink to Paper by Keith Manuel
Last year I got into fountain pens in a big way. I liked the idea of escaping from the rapid pace of modern communication, just for a few minutes. I bought a Pilot Metropolitan online and got to work leaking ink everywhere and abusing the pen’s poor nib. Little had I known that I took my first step into a larger world. The fountain pen is an elegant tool, and it took time to appreciate that. (I found some good YouTube tutorials.) I began outlining my writing with the fountain pen. I began taking notes during business meetings. I began buying fountain pens as gifts for college graduates. I scrounged for old writing ink bottles in old boxes and at the backs of filing cabinets, like a post-apocalyptic wastelander who finally has time to write their memoirs (TwilightZone.GIF), but in time those ran out. I sought out ink in second-hand stores before accepting that in order to pursue this hobby further I would need to buy my supplies online, receiving a receipt by email and tracking the order with my smartphone.
Month of Joy: Listening to the Odyssey by Kate Heartfield
This fall, I taught an evening course at a university about an hour’s drive from my house. The drive in was a dismal drive at the tail-end of rush hour, and at this latitude at this time of year, the journey was dark both ways. In those dark and tired hours, I found a source of great joy: The audiobook version of Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey. Experiencing an epic poem as an oral performance is entirely different from reading it. Wilson used iambic pentameter, the traditional meter for English verse. The lines are shorter than in Homer’s dactylic hexameter, but the number of lines in the poem remains the same, in Wilson’s translation. Wilson also used simple language because “stylistic pomposity is un-Homeric” and to encourage a more visceral engagement with the story.
Month of Joy: My Father by Ausma Zehanat Khan
My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease several years ago. Unfortunately, his variant of the disease included symptoms of gradually worsening dementia. The tragic irony of this is that my father was a psychiatrist for whom mental health was a lifelong calling. When I was in high school casting about for projects to work on, my father would recommend that I shed light on issues such as depression, personality disorder, or addiction. He helped me with these projects, teaching me to grapple with all sides of an issue, but he made sure I understood that the well-being of the patient should be central.
Month of Joy: Socks by Rhiannon Held
Something that never fails to bring me joy is $1 Target seasonal socks. I know I’m not alone in my enjoyment of fancy, patterned socks—they’re the subject of entire specialty stores, one of which is even a 5-minute drive from my apartment, not to mention the staggering variety available online. Patterned socks are a way to be wild, or twee, or geeky in secret, a mark of personality that doesn’t necessarily have to be shared with anyone else. The only trouble, I find, with many of the patterned socks available out there is their price. If we accept the fatuous financial advice currency of lattes (Give up one latte a day and soon—!) most pairs cost two lattes, if not three. For me, that makes them a “get one pair and try to really, really enjoy it” item. A “self-control” item. And that’s not a simple pleasure anymore. That’s an adulting pleasure, one that drags with it a complicated tangle of required self-control and then guilt if you fail to properly deploy that control. And I understand the appeal of purchasing one, ridiculously expensive chocolate truffle and savoring every single bite (all two of them). I do! But I also understand a wish to sometimes stuff yourself with chocolate and not have to either blow your monthly grocery budget in one trip to the artisan chocolate store or have your coworker look at you and sniff, “How can you eat those store brand chocolates? They taste like wax.”
