What brings you joy?
Considering everything that's happening recently it's getting increasingly harder to find rest and peace, and I've been wondering what do people in this community do for fun, if there's any media you recently found you enjoy, or anything else that comes to mind.
It's been really hard finding community where i live, and i thought maybe this will make me and other people like me feel a sense of community.
Hanging out with my kids and playing vidya gaem. I may start a new ttrpg game soon, a couple of my friends are feeling the itch and I've got some ideas.
Kids are the best tho
I am not capable of feeling joy anymore.
Picking produce from my garden, and cooking meals for my family, are the only things that bring me joy these days. My therapist runs a craft group, it doesn't bring joy but it is helping with a sense of community.
Acknowledging that suffering is just as important as pleasure in the human condition, I've come to a peace with suffering. It's just our turn in time. Oddly enough, facing the suffering head on with acceptance that the world has balance, has made a lot of room for joys in my small, daily life.
I don't know when the last day with my family will be, and so, it is easy to appreciate our time today, basically.
I'll try to keep all that in mind, hope can be very fleeting so it's very appreciated
James Hoffmann reviewing a coffee maker previously owned by David Lynch. It's not good. The coffee maker, that is. The video is delightful.
Enjoyed it, thanks for sharing :)
I have a few places where I can find joy in my life.
From nature, I find happiness from the trails I walk to the garden of veggies and plants that I grow.
For creativity, I have been learning some coding and building operating systems for my laptop and raspberry pi home server.
Socially, I got really lucky last year and met someone who has been amazing to me. She's my mycelium and through her I've been meeting all these new interesting people who I've been able to relate and connect with. People who have unique and very open personalities that aren't solely based on work or religion.
Growing vegetables was on my mind for quite some time, but it would take time until i have enough money for a place with room for that.
I'm right now going through university studying software engineering, I'd love it if you could share some sources for systems programming, i also got another old laptop recently and looking to experiment on it.
Happy to hear you found someone, hope you two find plenty of happiness together :)
I'm living at home now with my aging parents so I'm fortunate enough to use some of the backyard for growing veggies and plants.
I've mostly been "building" an operating system by using Alpine Linux. It's a super minimal operations system that's commonly used for containers like Docker. Once installed, you start everything from a TTY screen. There is support for graphical desktop environments but even then you need to add extra parts to it. Everything from file systems to USB connectivity and so on.
It's been a good starting point for me into understanding how Operating Systems work without taking any formal education. Alpine is very modular which means you can create a system specific to your needs if you wish. I think it's great for a web facing server since you can create a system that has less surface area to attack. One step out of many when it comes to internet safety.
I did create a program for myself based on POSIX scripting standards for file transfers using Rsync which I am quite proud of creating. It should in theory work on a wide range of operating systems that fall under unix, including apple products or even windows if you are using the linux sub system with Rsync installed.
You can see it here
Thank you. There is so much love and understanding between us and the people in her friend group and I appreciate all of them so much. I'm happy to have met all of them.
Playing with my dogs.
Cuddling.
I miss my dog, man
Looking at nature in our garden, helping my other half grow vegetables and herbs (not enough to ever be self-sufficient, but it feels nice to eat the results). Trying generate as much solar power as possible (which again, isn't enough to be off-grid, but enough for an emergency). Watching our rabbits grow and interact with each other ❤️ Finding interesting people on the fediverse, and trying to get other people to try it (which isn't very effective at the moment!)
Edit: We are watching Clarksons' Farm, which is entertaining, but also raises important points about our food system.
I'm actually jealous, hope you two lead a long and happy life :)
Thank you :)
I hope so - we have lots of rabbits to look after!
I've been reconnecting with old friends, and keeping together with current friends through board games and such. One highlight was Codenames, lots of laughs and stuff. I highly recommend it for its collaborative nature that's more focused on language interpretation than skill like in chess.
Doing woodworking when I can get the time - there's nothing like a spinning chunk of wood or whirring bandsaw blade to narrow your thoughts down to just one topic. I have a hard time quieting my mind but that works pretty well. Probably about as close to zen as I get.
Creative stuff, writing/editing a solarpunk TTRPG campaign guide when my mind is in the right place, doing the art for it with a podcast on in the background when it isn't and I want to be distracted. Chipping away at these projects feels good. I can end the day thinking about what I got done and planning next steps.
A bit of volunteering gets me out and into the company of folks I get along with.
I made clay figurines earlier this week with my partner, having a creative outlet is good for the soul.
Though tbh, woodworking sounds more fun, being able to make your own furniture would also save some money probably, considering how expensive wooden furniture became where i lived.
It's an incredibly useful skillset in my opinion (though I'll admit the saying about everything looking like a nail when all you have is a hammer probably rings truer than I'd like to admit). One of my main hobbies is scavenging furniture on trash day and fixing it up to practice furniture restoration. We got a ton of the stuff in our place that way. Sometimes I fix nice stuff I don't need and give it away on my local Buy Nothing page just to keep it out of the landfill.
I also turn replacement handles for knives and spatulas and other kitchen stuff on the lathe, and help out with carpentry projects for friends and relatives.
The big cost is space for tools and lumber. Where I am at least, tools aren't especially hard to come by secondhand so most of mine are hand-me-downs or purchased at consignment shops. Older tools are almost always better quality than newer stuff, except for safety, where some of the new ones have much better designs or features. I find most of my lumber through Buy Nothing or trash day - haven't bought any for years now.
Listen/watch some early Doug Stanhope :)
Saved, will try it :)
What brings you joy?
The suffering of the people I hate or despise.
Schadenfreude. Nice.
The "consume media" mindset is a trap, IME.
People who spend hours a day consuming media aren't happy people usually.
I am allowed to share joy i find in music (etc), and discuss what i enjoy in it, it comes off very preachy and out of place to instantly go "actually that's consumerism" when all I'm doing is seeking community.
That was not really the question... so, what brings you joy?
I downloaded the first season of Silicon Valley the other day, so I'm enjoying that.
It's a great series!
That said I am often nearly succumbing to all the doom out there. There have been days in the last few months when I was really not wanting to live anymore. I then return to one of the points above and carry on, and the doom passes. I'll keep doing that, sometimes out of spite, till I'm booted out of this place or this life.
All of the points I wrote down connect with caring for human and non-human life (even the sourdough is a friend!). One more point I should add is ceremony/prayer, which sounds stupid to the average anarchist/atheist, but it has become important to me and connects me to ancestors and landscape. The land is alive and my work is to participate in caring for the land and its inhabitants - a lot of that philosophy is borrowed from native and indigenous people. I'm not caring for others because some god tells me to, but because being a good neighbor to people, plants and animals makes everyone involved more happy.
All I do is purposefully small. No big ambitions that would eat me (been there, done that). Just my tiny self doing my best. Plans and ideas don't have to be - shouldn't be - big and sparkling.