Tag: joy (page 1 of 1)

Photo of the UCLA women's basketball team gathered around the 2026 NCAA National Championship trophy, wearing black Champions caps and shirts, smiling and holding up four fingers. Blue and gold confetti covers the trophy and floor.

April 19, 2026 / 0 Comments

Bleed Blue, Pt. 2

Early during this year’s March Madness, I said, “My annual worry with the Bruins: they don’t have enough ‘dawg’ for the SEC teams and Coach Cori overcoaching in big games.” Well, I was proven wrong on both counts. The 2026 National Champions got there by defeating the two best teams in the SEC, and by the end, Cori Close had ascended to join the ranks of the most quotable and noteworthy coaches in basketball. It wasn’t the Xs and Os that garnered so much attention for UCLA’s leader, though I think that’s an underappreciated aspect of her attributes; it was how she talks about the culture she’s cultivating, the lessons and habits she’s building in her locker room, and her commitment to never losing sight of her role as an educator and dream merchant. The best coaches in women’s basketball all seem to have these qualities, but what clicked for Close this year is that she’s figured out how to do it her way: earnest, selfless, demanding, hokey, and, perhaps most important of all, joyful.

“I love these girls,” is what Most Outstanding Player, Lauren Betts, has been saying during their whirlwind media tour since winning the championship. There’s something going on in Westwood. Unabashed happiness. Relentless care. Both in pursuit of excellence. We’ve seen it at gymnastics meets and volleyball matches, and most recently at Easton Stadium with the ninth-ranked softball program.

Last year, I couldn’t put my finger on what was behind my allegiance beyond proximity, but on a beautiful day watching the Bruin bats dismantle the Cal Bears in a doubleheader, I realized that it’s about more than being able to get to campus in twenty minutes or less. The softball squad exhibited characteristics similar to those of the championship basketball team. During every pitch, infielders constantly encouraged whoever was on the mound. When someone was at the plate, the coach was, to use the parlance of athletes, pouring into them. Before blasting her 31st homerun of the season, senior Megan Grant was encouraged by Coach Kelly Inouye-Perez to “send a missile.” And over the back wall, she did. On the rare occasion a pitch made it past one of her players and was called a strike, Inouye-Perez turned into their advocate, informing the umpire that “it wasn’t a good pitch,” calling out the particulars that made it as such. Regardless of the outcome of each at-bat, hitters were told they had made good choices. “Pro choices.” “Team choices.” Each person seemed encouraged to bring their unique flair to their position, while all were incredibly invested in their collective performance rather than individual success. During the afternoon, Grant and fellow senior Jordan Woolery became the first teammates in NCAA Division I history to collect 30 home runs in a single season. The Bruins would break three other school and conference records during the two wins.

After the games, three graduating seniors were informed that they had been given golden tickets to be drafted by the fledgling Pro Softball league, AUSL. “She wants her girls with her,” Elle Duncan would say after Meg received her ticket. She’d get her wish granted. Twice.

Like Betts and the basketball squad, it’s team over everything.

In this era of “I alone can fix it” ruthless individualism, I’m most inspired by evidence of earnest, joyful, hardscrabble people working together.

I shouldn’t have been searching for the dawgs on the bench; the interlocked hands and confident smiles were more than enough.

Can I get an eight-clap?

March 21, 2026 / 1 Comment

51

Tiffany asked me what I wanted for my 51st year, and my quick answer was “to get to the money.”

To sit courtside at Los Angeles Sparks games and say hi to Dee, our favorite bartender in the Delta Sky lounge.

To travel for basketball reasons on a whim. To join our wealthier friends in donating to the arts.

To become fluent in opera.

To be a patron of the spaces that generate the vibes I want to see in the world.

We stood in line at the home opener for ACFC, surrounded by people who want to live in the same inclusive, collaborative, and supportive society that I want, and that’s what I desire.

More of this.

More reminders that the chaos on our screens isn’t always reflective of the realities of our neighborhoods.

I want to love my neighbor like atoms sharing a cell.

I want to love my body like a turtle loves its shell.

I want to be where joy is.

I want to be joy.

I want joy.

Joy.

What do I want in my 51st year?

To rain down joy on my loved ones and enemies alike.

I want to be a warrior of light.

A wide, sunlit Los Angeles scene with a tall palm tree on the left and a leafy tree on the right, framing a concrete wall tagged with large graffiti reading “DESTROY ICE”; dry grass and a low fence sit in the foreground beneath a clear blue sky.

January 16, 2026 / 0 Comments

Intentionally Offline

View on Threads

Ironically, my intention to spend more of my life away from screens crystallized around a social media post. I’ve known Zadi Diaz since the heyday of blogging, the rise of YouTube, and those few years when SXSWi cared more about the culture and creativity of the web than about monetizing enthusiasm at scale. She has always placed a grounded, human lens on our shared digital experience.

Throughout 2025, I’d already been noticing how much more joy I got from leaving the house than from scrolling. Friends. Family. Music. Sports. Art. The world. In the fall, I saw Little Simz live and had to check my growing inner middle-aged crank. I visited Memphis for the first time, wrapped another WNBA season courtside with the Sparks, and started trekking to SoFi Stadium for Chargers home games thanks to a friend’s largesse.

And yet, those excursions didn’t feel especially intentional. Too much of my time was still swallowed by doomscrolling or playing a dumb mobile game. Worse, when I was out, I often felt a pull back toward the screen. I’d sit in the car after arriving somewhere that wasn’t time-sensitive, staring at my phone instead of going about my day. I could easily convince myself to skip or cancel activities, return to a comfortable seat, and indulge in the dopamine rush of the algorithms.

The problem was that the high wasn’t even that satisfying. It hasn’t been for a long time.

I don’t know if we, as a culture, have reached a tipping point with algorithmically curated experiences and hyper-niche virtual connectivity. I do know that I have. When every app leaves you feeling vaguely worse, rarely shows you people you actually know, and demands more effort to determine whether something is real, manipulated, or AI-generated than to enjoy it, it’s time to step away.

I no longer want social media giving me simulated or secondhand experiences that I know are more entertaining, more fulfilling, and more trustworthy in person.

Over the holiday break, I was animatedly telling Tiffany about my intention to trade digital experiences for IRL ones whenever possible.

“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that we make this resolution every year?”

She wasn’t wrong. Since 2021, I’ve resolved to get back outside each year.

Just a year ago, around this time, I saved another Threads post to my journal:

View on Threads

So what’s different this time? Will I retreat to the endless scroll after another round of declarations?

I don’t think so.

Jenna Wortham has described the current impulse as being “performatively offline.” I don’t take that as a pejorative, but it doesn’t quite fit for me. As Zadi put it, the algorithmic artificiality of our digital spaces is pushing many of us toward the natural world. When you spend too much time trying to determine what’s real, the simplest response is to stop looking at the deception and walk out your door.

The hellscape you see in your feeds may exist in your neighborhood. For some of us, it absolutely does. But more likely, what you’ll find instead are friendly neighbors, pets, babies, and communities in need of your presence and patronage.

Here in Los Angeles, that means embracing friction, inconvenience, and uncertainty. Of course, you sit in traffic. Of course, there are odd smells and curious characters on public transportation. But, in exchange, you get opera in the park, free art in galleries and bars, and protest graffiti on the streets. You eat ten-dollar street tacos instead of thirty-dollar ones delivered by DoorDash. You stumble into hidden treasures, make new friends, and deepen bonds with nearly lifelong ones.

In return for putting your phone down and looking up, you see the world—your world—for what it actually is. That clarity can inspire small acts of care. It can also make visible how wonder and injustice coexist, as they always have. That is both infuriating and comforting. That’s the human condition.

Living this way doesn’t feel performative to me. It feels like a recognition that no matter what tech billionaires try to sell us next, no matter how sophisticated the algorithms become, they still can’t beat the desert of the real.

It’s not all bad online. I enjoy reaction videos to popular media. I look forward to conversations with others about the things I’m passionate about, especially when I’m confident they won’t descend into the caustic debate tactics common on the worst parts of the internet. There are still those serendipitous moments of genuine connection that I appreciate.

But joy is offline. So is epistemic clarity. If I leave my house and keep that supercomputer in my pocket, I don’t have to question my senses. Seeing is still believing when my life isn’t primarily experienced through funhouse mirrors.

Surprisingly, this has made me better at social media. My Threads posts have been on fire lately. When I’m feeding my soul with the physical world, I show up more honestly in digital spaces.

I perform here. Out there, though, I just am.

View on Threads

Links & Things

Joan Westenberg on the case for blogging in the ruins.

Sasha Frere-Jones collected some outstanding writing about 2025.

Kai Cenat is learning in public.

Pam Ward retired from ESPN’s women’s basketball coverage, but she’s not done yet.

For Your Ears: You Can’t Kill God With Bullets by Conway the Machine.

For Your Noggin: Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer.

For Your Free Time: Celebrity Traitors UK.

A concert crowd with their hands raised many forming the shape of a heart with those hands. — Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash

November 20, 2025 / 1 Comment

Sometimes I Be Extrovert

We drove the backroads from Burbank to Hollywood, reminiscing about a time when our nights out felt more random: talking with strangers at the bar, late-night vittles, bad ideas powered by bartenders with heavy pours and better stories. Back in my day, we didn’t trade friction for convenience. Back in my day, we were outside.

What a bunch of middle-aged bullshit.

As I surveyed the near-capacity crowd at the Hollywood Palladium on a Tuesday night, I realized the city hasn’t stopped moving. I might just be comforting myself with old stories instead of paying attention. Folks still pack into venues, still dance and sweat and sing along. They’re still out on the sidewalk buying bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Randos still ask odd questions.

And I still have feet and hips that work.

Despite our comfortable balcony seats, I got up and danced for most of Little Simz’s final stop on her North American tour. Midway through her nearly two-hour set, Simz brought out her DJ kit and cranked the energy up another level. Even the usher paused her aisle-policing to break it down for a minute. I took that as my cue to see if I still had a little step-ball-change in me.

I do.

After the dance party, Simz shifted gears to talk about the creative process behind Lotus, her latest album. She called it “muddy waters.” She wasn’t feeling inspired. She didn’t trust her ear. There was self-doubt. But she kept showing up. She kept working. Eventually, she found her way through and made one of her most personal and mature records—raw, intentional, and honest.

On “Free,” she raps, “Love is every time I put pen to the page.” Hearing that live hit me harder than I expected.

I’ve been wading through my own swamp—circling ideas, hesitating, telling myself I’m waiting for inspiration while ignoring the truth: creatives create. A writer writes.

Before getting back to rocking the mic, Simz dropped one more gem: “It’s easy to get started. It’s much harder to finish.”

Whew.

It was a fantastic show.

When I complain things have changed, maybe I’m the one choosing comfort over friction. Am I becoming the curmudgeon wistful for the way things used to be? Or am I still the person willing to adapt, stay open, and lean in when things get difficult?

Because surprise, delight, and joy still show up for the people who put in the work.

And on a night when I said yes and stepped out with a friend for an adventure in Hollywood, the city rewarded me.

Sometimes I be extrovert.

Ruby Ibarra sits on the NPR Tiny Desk Concert stage with her left fist raised and wearing an "I *heart* Pinays" t-shirt

July 2, 2025 / 0 Comments

Freedom is a Joyful Noise

I’m at The Regent Theater in Downtown LA to see Ruby Ibarra, the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest winner from the Bay Area, perform. Local public media stations, including LAist and KVCR, are in the building, handing out fans and making the case for public media. The Regent is packed with a classically multicultural Los Angeles crowd—this time, with a strong showing from the Filipino community. People came out to see the diminutive Pinay rapper with a big voice and even bigger presence.

Initially scheduled for June 11, the show was postponed when the mayor instituted a curfew in downtown during protests against ICE raids that are still tearing through our communities.

Ruby doesn’t mention the delay until her final song, but when she does, she doesn’t mince words. She’s a first-generation immigrant, and her music centers the Filipino immigrant experience. Before launching into “7,000 Miles,” she reminds us: “No one is illegal on stolen land!”

Everything is political.

Earlier that day, I’d been listening to We Insist 2025!—the new album from Terri Lyne Carrington and Christie Dashiell, a reimagining of Max Roach’s We Insist! One song in particular, “Joyful Noise,” features a spoken word piece that stayed with me:

And when we struggle, when times are tough, we draw strength from our ancestors.
We put away our differences and we come together.
When folks try to take away our freedoms, we don’t just let them.
We fight back!
We don’t become despondent or complacent, and we don’t drown ourselves in escapism or give up on what we know is right.
No!
Instead, we say, “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Emmett G. Price III

That’s the spirit that got me out of the house on a Tuesday. That’s what I felt in the room.

Shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors—many of them immigrants or their American-born children—we smiled, sang, and bobbed our heads as one. During Ruby’s homage to Bay Area hip-hop, we even got a little hyphy.

When opener Tish Hyman performed her song “Lucky,” that’s exactly how I felt, too.

There’s not a lot going right in my life—or in the headlines—but after a night of making joyful noise, I can at least envision a better tomorrow.

Freedom is smiling in the face of adversity because you know in the depth of your soul, just like your grandma told you, everything is going to be alright.

May 25, 2020 / 0 Comments

Are You Feeling Sad?

“No worries, no worries, oh. You’re gonna be alright.”

— Little Dragon

The route to Saturday’s successful grandma pie started a few weeks ago when I first watched Carla Makes Sheet Pan Pizza.

I had assumed it was a recently published episode of From the Test Kitchen when it popped up in my recommended playlist, but it is nearly a year old. It’s a delightful 11 minutes that close with other Bon Appétit staff members cursing with pleasure after their first bite.

Pizza has been one of my regular cravings during the COVID-19 “safer-at-home” orders. Despite a couple decent pies from a local restaurant, they hadn’t scratched the itch. Carla made it clear that this would.

I haven’t been spending my homebound days baking like many of my friends (and many Americans in general). In this case, though, I made it my mission to make this entire thing from scratch.

The original plan was to make it for our ninth wedding anniversary. Problem number one: we had flour in the house but no yeast. Yeast has been hard to come by during the pandemic. I had yet to see any of it restocked in our local grocery stores when I’ve made my occasional excursions out for provisions. On Mother’s Day, however, when I ventured out for my first low risk meet up with my parents and sister—outdoor, ten feet apart, masks on—I was able to procure yeast from my mama.

When I went about the making of the dough, though, a new problem: the yeast wasn’t active. No exciting reactions in my warm water. No foaming. Nada. Anniversary plan derailed but, no worries, dear reader, we ate very well.

In the time before the coronavirus, I’d cultivated a life of great convenience. We live in a comfortable neighborhood, surrounded by grocery stores and shops of all kinds, all within walking distance. They are usually stocked with all manner of goods in multiple varieties to appease the upscale palettes of the surrounding zip codes. How brain disruptive to be denied such a common ingredient?

I would not be denied. A little online hunting and a large quantity of yeast was ordered. There would be no instant gratification, as it would take more than a week to arrive. Still, the delay of good things, the earning of them even if it is just by having to wait, has been a lesson I have enjoyed re-learning over the last two months.

Ten days later than planned, yeast went back into the mixer. Ten minutes after that, bubbles appeared. A ball of dough formed. 24 hours after that, a pizza went into the oven and, fuck, that’s delicious.

There’s joy in cooking. There’s joy in circling the block. There’s joy in Los Angeles. There’s joy in remembering to care for others.

Even now, there’s joy.