We Collect Joy

Collage by Lani

I have a subscription to One Thing Today, Michael Nobb's podcast, in which he examines his life, creativity, work, and tea every morning.   If you don't know Michael Nobbs, he is a very inspiring artist in Wales who is using his art work to live his life more fully, to live with joy (in spite of it all), and in a most sustainable way imaginable.  He's got a blog and eBooks and newsletters and of course his podcasts. On a recent podcast, Michael was wondering what people do with their free time. He was trying to construct a sustainable work/play routine which would include some attention to free time and wanted to work on a list of things to do in his free afternoon.

Well, coincidentally, (I love how these things weave themselves together in our lives if we let them) over on 14 Secrets, Bill started working on a Zine for all the 14 Secrets folks to  contribute to, a zine called We Collect Joy.   It struck me that perhaps in my free time I like to collect joy, create joy, and document joy in a variety of ways. 

So if you had as much free time as you could use, and you were able to share some joy with others, what would it be that you would share? 

Here are some ideas from the 14 Secrets folks (I can't wait to see this zine!).  If I could, I would share
scenes of Nature's beauty, faces of children and pictures of animals, mountain moments poetry, nature photographs of the mountains alive with color, words and art to celebrate the joy of life, as much color and light filled joy as possible, a world filled with light and rainbows, laughter, music, the ocean, being surrounded by trees, small children being free, and a walk on the Escarpment where you can experience glorious fall colour, the wide expanse of Georgian Bay and smell the forest and the humus, feel the breeze rustle their hair and know that all is well within Creation.

How it's going to work is Bill will create a digital "We Collect Joy" zine for everyone in the group to have.  What will go into the zine?  Our favorite poems, photos, pieces of art that we have created that gives us joy, essays on what "joy" means to us, or a new digital collage all about joy.  Bill has already created the cover for this zine (which he may still revise), but hopefully it will inspire you to want to join this digital collaboration.

We Collect Joy cover by Bill.

 So to answer Michael Nobb's question, "We Collect Joy!"