joy is my product and it's not for sale

happiness isn't "out there." it's here.

In Hank Green’s second novel, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, one the characters says, “You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce.”

Wow. Let me re-attach my jaw.

As I decorated cakes with orange zest and picked a much too sparkly outfit for my New Year’s Eve at home, one thing I didn’t do was write. Over the two weeks I was off from work, I spent zero time putting pen to paper. I made no headway on my side hustle. I did not schedule-send networking emails for January 2nd at 9:02am.

But I walked in the jaw-chattering cold almost every day.

I read a book on my list, even though it was only 170 pages.

I sorted through clothes to donate and ordered a fancy new pair of pants.

I slept in.

I took a bath.

I sipped chamomile.

And yet I still felt like I didn’t produce anything. I sank under the weight of wasted time, wishing I could go back and make more out of those 14 days.

from one of my walks :)

Even outside of the winter break, we’re constantly bombarded by posts about all the stuff people are “producing.” I remember seeing a post on substack where someone listed that they were recording an album, writing a novel, starting a business, oh and probably saving the white rhinos while they’re at it. If all of that brings you joy, fine — but I don’t think we need to have a megaphone to the lips every time we start or finish a project. It creates this culture of “if you’re not producing, you’re not living.”

In my own industry, the pressure to produce is even more persistent. Everyone in advertising prides themselves on making “stuff” — a new TV commercial, some newsworthy stunt, an award-winning campaign. I happened to not make a lot of stuff last year, or at least not stuff that I was proud to show off. And it made me feel pretty useless.

Until I read Hank’s quote. And I realized that I did “produce” something over the year: joy. Which got me thinking — if joy is something you produce, in that it comes from you, then why do we look for it in outside things?

Joy isn’t “out there.” It’s something we make. And deciding that you’re going to spend more time making it isn’t frivolous, or self-centered, or shallow. It’s brave.

Joy is a hard thing to produce. It takes flour to make a cake. It takes words to make a novel. It takes miles to make a marathon. But what does it take to make joy?

The timing of this revelation was apropos, with New Year’s resolutions in the hot seat right now. It made me think of a recent New York Times article by Melissa Kirsch, where she said:

Resolutions tend to be freighted with the implication that the way you are now is not good, or at least not good enough. My resolutions are typically of this variety: self-criticism disguised as self-improvement. Get in shape; stop your profligate spending; be nicer; work harder.

She goes on to say that these types of resolutions seem “architected by someone who doesn’t like you.”

So maybe it’s not so much what we should be doing differently, but how we should be thinking differently about what we already do. I doubt that many of you are rotten-to-the-core people in desperate need of a personality rebrand. You’d probably do just fine with some minor tweaks. Think of what resolutions someone who does like you might suggest (I think they call that a “friend”).

If we view this annual self-refresh through the lens of producing more joy, the rest will follow. Instead of declaring that you must write more, decide that you should spend time figuring out what’s blocking you from writing (maybe you’re not writing about things you like, and it’s time to play with other styles or topics). Instead of holding yourself to meditating every day when you dread every “inhale” and “exhale,” figure out a different way to destress. Instead of putting screen time limits on your phone to keep yourself from scrolling, figure out what your brain would rather be doing.

And instead of counting pounds and words and emails and dollars as the metrics for how you do this year, consider that you can’t measure the product when the product is joy.