For me, nature writing holds a lot of joy. I also think there are poets (Mary Oliver comes to mind) who write of simple joys. Maybe it's not writing at large, but the form of writing that is the obstacle. A personal essay about someone with a perfect life doesn't sound interesting, but that doesn't mean your own happiness isn't worth writing about.
Right now, what I'm writing about are the difficult things in life. I know why, my life has been...unusual. So unusual that I've allowed myself to be pushed to write a memoir. And when we got 2/3 of the way through that, the editor I work with said it was too big. It needs to be three books. That surprises me, I'm "old" at 58, but don't feel so old to have lived a life that needs to be captured in a trilogy.
But, back to happy life. I can't wait to get this first volume done. This is the heavy lifting. This is me looking back and the bodies scattered in the rear-view mirror. That is not a metaphor. Actual corpses. People who didn't make it.
Every now and then, I pause and write a short story, one where I bring in elements of Taiwan or Taiwan aboriginal folklore, but modernize them. My "happy place."
Me? I write like I breathe. And I breathe when things are happy. And when things aren't. Maybe I wasn't like that when younger, maybe when younger I would revel in the happiness and not write. But not now, and I promise that at some point my posts here on Substack will be happier :-). And. I'm subcribing to yours. Pieces and questions like this are wonderful!
I ran into a friend yesterday after a long time, and she asked, “How are you?”, which, as Spaniards, basically means, “Tell me everything that’s been happening in your life.” I just said, “It’s all good.” She pressed, “No, but really, how is everything?”
And for the first time in my life, I realised, I had no dramatic stories to tell. No endless updates, no chaos. Just peace. I used to be the one with the never-ending stories, but right now, I’m simply enjoying being. It might sound boring, but honestly, it’s what’s making me happiest. Like tonight, I’m about to cook risotto with my 14-year-old son, and that, for me, is next-level joy.
It reminded me of how much I loved Meghan Markle’s Netflix show, for how simple and joyful it was. And of course, as a personal stylist, I probably admire aesthetics more than I should. But seeing all the criticism, I just couldn’t understand it.
What’s so wrong with someone being happy doing simple things?
I believe we are all addicted to drama somehow that simple joy and happiness makes us feel discomfort …
Love this, especially the Meghan Markle reference. You are so right about this, what is wrong with someone loving their life and being happy doing simple things? Thank you for reading 🧡
keep writing about happy things I am def following that (if you feel like it), I decided long ago not to expose myself to negative content, and life (real and digital), keeps putting happiness on my way. someone has to start ;)
Writing about happiness, or simple contentment certainly is possible. Oddly the first thing that came to mind is the plot of Babette’s Feast, a story I urge everyone to read or watch (the movie is truly beautiful to watch).
In fact, I’d say the plot goes from quiet contentment to surrendering into a burst of joy!
Great thoughts and questions to ponder. For me, happiness is about being fully present in myself, my body, and my present moment. And that can look really different from moment to moment.
The satisfaction of feeling my energy move through me with ease and flow, naturally going where it needs to go… me naturally following it and having the experience of being me without judgement.
This to me is what a happy life is… sometimes I manage to be there, sometimes, not so much lol. It’s a slow learning process and I get better at it all the time… the letting go of what is not me and not trying to make myself be anything that I am not.
Anyway. Not sure that would feel right to anyone else, but that’s my two cents 🙂
Love this and I feel the exact same: being able to be me without judgement and just letting life happen to you truly is happiness. Thank you for reading Natalie 🧡
What a thought-provoking read. Simply put, I write about tension in my life because life for the past several years has been full of struggle, so it wouldn’t be authentic to write about a boring, happy life. However, I certainly have moments of happiness I write about briefly within essays.
As far as entire essays on idyllic, “boring” lives…I think video essayists on YouTube do this better. Vlogs are just about people living ordinary, happy lives not doing anything particularly exciting but simply going to the coffee shop or taking a walk or cleaning their home. Morgan Long or Randi Lynn Reed’s videos come to mind. It’s probably because showing you their happy life seems less vain/more interesting than writing about it.
In the writing genre, I see plenty of poets tackling the simply joys of happy life. Probably because you can write a short poem about snippets of happiness but an entire essay might seem overkill/redundant. There’s also the utopian genre but that’s mostly in fiction - unsure how you would translate utopianism to nonfiction/essays because frankly, our current world is so far from a utopian place.
I cannot believe I didn't think of vlogs! And I've been a follower of Morgan Long for a really long time! Thank you for this great reminder and it would be interesting to see if the vibe of such vlogs can be translated into writing?! Thank you for reading Tara 🧡
Seems like what you’re looking for is more blogs circa the late 2000s/early 2010s, but there are definitely blog-style posts on Substack. Some ones I can recommend here are those written by
This is lovely, Annika. You have challenged me, and now I need to go back and read over my essays. And then piece apart what would make for a good essay on something uplifting. Not just a record of a moment or a happy occasion - not a written photograph - line by line account of an event. What would make that happiness significant? What about it would be a universal truth to share with readers?
“Trying to find a headline in everything made me enjoy almost none of it.” — this is like how the compulsion to post to Instagram ruins the actual experience of beauty, and I hadn’t thought of it applying to writing too. I think sadness makes for better songs than happiness, but I don’t feel that as much with writing. It’s nice to write about beauty you notice too🙂 I think another writer here, Ellery Frost, posted recently about doing that. Like you, I like to write about the deeper meaning in everyday things and that includes hard things, bittersweet things as well as totally random neither positive/negative things.
Thank you Suansita for reading and for your lovely comment 🧡
You are right, the parallels to the pressure of posting on instagram are striking and that is exactly the feeling I have sometimes. And thank you so much for the Ellery Frost recommendation, loved her latest piece!
It is possible and you've just done it, written about a happy life, that is. Perhaps the question you are asking is, will people be interested in reading about my happy life? Some will, but most will not. The daily news is not filled with happy stories for a reason. The human condition is to suffer, it's what we do, what life is inherently made for. Happiness is always what is strived for, but the journey we are told is more important. I wouldn't say you're in a minority when it comes to being in a happy place and it's work protecting that space but writing about it will be a personal choice not a crowd pleaser. You'll have a happiness fan club, again worth protecting, but the masses want meaning, they crave confirmation that others are suffering too.
I am not sure that happiness is what we strive for. And I no longer believe that life is inherently made for suffering. In fact, a life that is built on suffering is not only tragic; it can be debilitating. A lot of depression and neurosis derive from the belief that suffering is where we live. Suffering is part of life - but not the meaning of it. How can that be true?
You bring up lots of good points here about the origen of inspiration for writers. For me, I value the mundane things in life where tension and happiness coexist. That’s why my Substack is mostly focused on the experience of being a new parent (https://dl831.substack.com/). I see my newsletter as a way of documenting my experiences and using them to explore broader questions of what it means to be human; for example, in my most recent newsletter I explored the concept of healthy femininity and how I’m approaching that topic as the father of a daughter. There are so many tension-filled topics related to parenting - for example, how to raise your child with a religious tradition without being dogmatic - that I don’t think I will run into writer’s block for some time yet.
Such a good read. I’ve been living a simple, happy life offline for a few years and just joined substack because things are in flux - my mom just passed and I’m also figuring out who I am as an empty nester. Maybe I’ll only write here until I sort things out again?
For me, nature writing holds a lot of joy. I also think there are poets (Mary Oliver comes to mind) who write of simple joys. Maybe it's not writing at large, but the form of writing that is the obstacle. A personal essay about someone with a perfect life doesn't sound interesting, but that doesn't mean your own happiness isn't worth writing about.
Love your last sentence here. 🧡 Thank you for reading.
"Trying to find a headline in everything made me enjoy almost none of it. Because most of the time a good life is simple." This really resonates.
Thank you so much for reading 🧡
Right now, what I'm writing about are the difficult things in life. I know why, my life has been...unusual. So unusual that I've allowed myself to be pushed to write a memoir. And when we got 2/3 of the way through that, the editor I work with said it was too big. It needs to be three books. That surprises me, I'm "old" at 58, but don't feel so old to have lived a life that needs to be captured in a trilogy.
But, back to happy life. I can't wait to get this first volume done. This is the heavy lifting. This is me looking back and the bodies scattered in the rear-view mirror. That is not a metaphor. Actual corpses. People who didn't make it.
Every now and then, I pause and write a short story, one where I bring in elements of Taiwan or Taiwan aboriginal folklore, but modernize them. My "happy place."
Me? I write like I breathe. And I breathe when things are happy. And when things aren't. Maybe I wasn't like that when younger, maybe when younger I would revel in the happiness and not write. But not now, and I promise that at some point my posts here on Substack will be happier :-). And. I'm subcribing to yours. Pieces and questions like this are wonderful!
“Happy people don’t Substack” is the corollary to “People in love don’t write love stories”.
Here’s a story about an ordinary happy life:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/95/monogamy/act-three-1
Another one is Laurie Colvin’s “An Old Fashioned Story”.
You might enjoy Slow Scottish Stories.
This really resonates with me, haha!
I ran into a friend yesterday after a long time, and she asked, “How are you?”, which, as Spaniards, basically means, “Tell me everything that’s been happening in your life.” I just said, “It’s all good.” She pressed, “No, but really, how is everything?”
And for the first time in my life, I realised, I had no dramatic stories to tell. No endless updates, no chaos. Just peace. I used to be the one with the never-ending stories, but right now, I’m simply enjoying being. It might sound boring, but honestly, it’s what’s making me happiest. Like tonight, I’m about to cook risotto with my 14-year-old son, and that, for me, is next-level joy.
It reminded me of how much I loved Meghan Markle’s Netflix show, for how simple and joyful it was. And of course, as a personal stylist, I probably admire aesthetics more than I should. But seeing all the criticism, I just couldn’t understand it.
What’s so wrong with someone being happy doing simple things?
I believe we are all addicted to drama somehow that simple joy and happiness makes us feel discomfort …
Love this, especially the Meghan Markle reference. You are so right about this, what is wrong with someone loving their life and being happy doing simple things? Thank you for reading 🧡
keep writing about happy things I am def following that (if you feel like it), I decided long ago not to expose myself to negative content, and life (real and digital), keeps putting happiness on my way. someone has to start ;)
Writing about happiness, or simple contentment certainly is possible. Oddly the first thing that came to mind is the plot of Babette’s Feast, a story I urge everyone to read or watch (the movie is truly beautiful to watch).
In fact, I’d say the plot goes from quiet contentment to surrendering into a burst of joy!
Loved reading your post.
Thank you for the recommendation Mona, will certainly check it out. And thank you for reading. 🧡
Great thoughts and questions to ponder. For me, happiness is about being fully present in myself, my body, and my present moment. And that can look really different from moment to moment.
The satisfaction of feeling my energy move through me with ease and flow, naturally going where it needs to go… me naturally following it and having the experience of being me without judgement.
This to me is what a happy life is… sometimes I manage to be there, sometimes, not so much lol. It’s a slow learning process and I get better at it all the time… the letting go of what is not me and not trying to make myself be anything that I am not.
Anyway. Not sure that would feel right to anyone else, but that’s my two cents 🙂
Love this and I feel the exact same: being able to be me without judgement and just letting life happen to you truly is happiness. Thank you for reading Natalie 🧡
What a thought-provoking read. Simply put, I write about tension in my life because life for the past several years has been full of struggle, so it wouldn’t be authentic to write about a boring, happy life. However, I certainly have moments of happiness I write about briefly within essays.
As far as entire essays on idyllic, “boring” lives…I think video essayists on YouTube do this better. Vlogs are just about people living ordinary, happy lives not doing anything particularly exciting but simply going to the coffee shop or taking a walk or cleaning their home. Morgan Long or Randi Lynn Reed’s videos come to mind. It’s probably because showing you their happy life seems less vain/more interesting than writing about it.
In the writing genre, I see plenty of poets tackling the simply joys of happy life. Probably because you can write a short poem about snippets of happiness but an entire essay might seem overkill/redundant. There’s also the utopian genre but that’s mostly in fiction - unsure how you would translate utopianism to nonfiction/essays because frankly, our current world is so far from a utopian place.
I cannot believe I didn't think of vlogs! And I've been a follower of Morgan Long for a really long time! Thank you for this great reminder and it would be interesting to see if the vibe of such vlogs can be translated into writing?! Thank you for reading Tara 🧡
Seems like what you’re looking for is more blogs circa the late 2000s/early 2010s, but there are definitely blog-style posts on Substack. Some ones I can recommend here are those written by
https://substack.com/@rmg and https://substack.com/@jgw
This is lovely, Annika. You have challenged me, and now I need to go back and read over my essays. And then piece apart what would make for a good essay on something uplifting. Not just a record of a moment or a happy occasion - not a written photograph - line by line account of an event. What would make that happiness significant? What about it would be a universal truth to share with readers?
Good question. Thank you for posting it.
Thank you for this lovely comment and I'd love to read what you come up with here! 🧡
“Trying to find a headline in everything made me enjoy almost none of it.” — this is like how the compulsion to post to Instagram ruins the actual experience of beauty, and I hadn’t thought of it applying to writing too. I think sadness makes for better songs than happiness, but I don’t feel that as much with writing. It’s nice to write about beauty you notice too🙂 I think another writer here, Ellery Frost, posted recently about doing that. Like you, I like to write about the deeper meaning in everyday things and that includes hard things, bittersweet things as well as totally random neither positive/negative things.
Thank you Suansita for reading and for your lovely comment 🧡
You are right, the parallels to the pressure of posting on instagram are striking and that is exactly the feeling I have sometimes. And thank you so much for the Ellery Frost recommendation, loved her latest piece!
Glad the recommendation worked out!🙂
It is possible and you've just done it, written about a happy life, that is. Perhaps the question you are asking is, will people be interested in reading about my happy life? Some will, but most will not. The daily news is not filled with happy stories for a reason. The human condition is to suffer, it's what we do, what life is inherently made for. Happiness is always what is strived for, but the journey we are told is more important. I wouldn't say you're in a minority when it comes to being in a happy place and it's work protecting that space but writing about it will be a personal choice not a crowd pleaser. You'll have a happiness fan club, again worth protecting, but the masses want meaning, they crave confirmation that others are suffering too.
I am not sure that happiness is what we strive for. And I no longer believe that life is inherently made for suffering. In fact, a life that is built on suffering is not only tragic; it can be debilitating. A lot of depression and neurosis derive from the belief that suffering is where we live. Suffering is part of life - but not the meaning of it. How can that be true?
"The human condition is to suffer" is so true. Thank you for your great comment and reading my newsletter. 🧡
You bring up lots of good points here about the origen of inspiration for writers. For me, I value the mundane things in life where tension and happiness coexist. That’s why my Substack is mostly focused on the experience of being a new parent (https://dl831.substack.com/). I see my newsletter as a way of documenting my experiences and using them to explore broader questions of what it means to be human; for example, in my most recent newsletter I explored the concept of healthy femininity and how I’m approaching that topic as the father of a daughter. There are so many tension-filled topics related to parenting - for example, how to raise your child with a religious tradition without being dogmatic - that I don’t think I will run into writer’s block for some time yet.
Thank you for reading and commenting Dan, and love the "where tension and happiness coexist". 🧡
Such a good read. I’ve been living a simple, happy life offline for a few years and just joined substack because things are in flux - my mom just passed and I’m also figuring out who I am as an empty nester. Maybe I’ll only write here until I sort things out again?
Thank you so much for reading 🧡 and sorry for your loss. I can assure you writing helps with almost everything.