Joy!

[oyceter]

fiveandfour seems to have tagged me with a long meme on joy:

THE SEARCH FOR JOY

Search your blog for the word "joy" used in the context of "happiness." If you cannot find the word in your weblog, you may use any of the select list of synonyms below.

joy — amusement, bliss, cheer, comfort, delectation, delight, ecstasy, elation, exaltation, exultation, exulting, felicity, gaiety, gladness, glee, good humor, gratification, happiness, hilarity, humor, jubilance, liveliness, merriment, mirth, pleasure, rapture, regalement, rejoicing, revelry, satisfaction, wonder

If your weblog does not include a built-in search engine, then you can use Google to search it only for the word you wish to find.

If you’ve found the word and it was not used facetiously or sarcastically, good for you. All you need to do is link to your earlier entry, and write a few words about that joyous moment. If, however, you have no joy (whole words only) in your weblog, you must dig deep in your soul and find something wonderful in your life right now. One little thing that fills you with warmth, that bubbles you over with quiet happiness, or tickles you with its good-hearted hilarity, or makes you glad you just took a breath, and are getting ready to take another. It doesn’t have to be anything big. A smile someone gave you; your cat on your shoulder; the way the light angles through your window and casts rainbows on your floor. All it has to be is something genuine, something real, something that matters to you.

Because we all need joy in our lives, and need to take the time — from time to time — to recognize it. And sometimes, we need to pass it on. Even if we’re a big pain in the ass when we do.

Anyway, instead of pointing to the first entry with "joy" in it, my Google results are so random and prove that fiveandfour's predictions are embarrassingly accurate that I figured I'd cut and paste them:

• I like Joy even though I've only used about two recipes in there because it splits up recipes by food type! (here)


• I finally got to the hotel and saw Yoon in the lobby! Joy! Someone I knew! (here)


• Fowler, Karen Joy - Artificial Things
  Fowler, Karen Joy - Sarah Canary
  Fowler, Karen Joy, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith, eds. - The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 (here)


• I also got my month's copy of Wired magazine today, one hundred plus (100+!!) pages of geeky joy crammed into paper and pictures! (here)


• In other news, my sister may be coming over here for Christmas! Joy! (here)


• After I transferred to private client in Taiwan for my last week as an intern, I danced around in the living room of my apartment my first day, jumping up and down and flailing about with my hands, out of the sheer joy that I was home before sunset for the first time in nine weeks. (here)


• Joy! I have a kimono, lalalalala! (here)

In conclusion, I use "Joy!" a lot as an exclamation.

I had a lovely weekend, in which I realized at several different points that I very much loved my life as it was and that I was living the life I wanted to life -- listening to fannishly's music in her car on the way home from taiko and relishing the performance, eating a linzer tart heart cookie (the bakery called them heart cookies, but I say they are tarts! Neener!) with my cappucino after a tomato and mozzarella sandwich at a French bakery I've never been to, complete with the company of friends, finding the little teru teru tenshi guy in my user icon at a stationery store (pictures soon to come), my new mix CD (creatively titled "Happy 4." Anyone who wants copies of CDs Happy 1-4 are of course very welcome to comment), fooding at the farmer's market, finding that there would be a yarn sale on Halloween night.

But, yes. Joy! And there were some lovely entries on my flist today: fannishly on health and beauty and feeling good (the compliment also gave me warm fuzzies, but mostly I'm just happy that my friend is feeling well and happy and full in the best of ways), heres_luck on moments. And this just made me grin maniacally.

So because I was feeling all happy and joyful today, I bounced around the apartment and probably annoyed the neighbors, sang silly off-key rat songs to the rats (brilliant lyrics include: "They are rats! They are happy, they are fat, they are RATS!" and "My rats, they have three corners tra-la, three corners have my rats..."), eating some blackberry pie, and somehow maneuvering myself between a chair, a table, my yarn crate, and the sofa in an attempt to kiss the rats and getting stuck in a very awkward position.

The word "joy" now sounds really weird.

Joy.

Weeeeeeiiiiiiiird.

Comments

[fiveandfour.livejournal.com]

Yay more joy!

Thanks for indulging me. It's been fun reading about the things that make people happy.

[oyceter]

Hee, yes, it very much is ^_^.

[cychi.livejournal.com]

you know, I'm unsure if i've ever seen you so happy =) sounds like a lot of fun :P

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Do you know what's happened to yhlee? I hope she didn't get savaged by RPF enthusiasts because of that post yesterday.

[oyceter]

I don't know... I've called her, but no word. I do know that one of her friends has called after she deleted her LJ and that she sounded ok...

Still rather worried though.