About this item
Once you begin looking for joy, you can find it pretty much anywhere. When Jennifer McGaha's grandmother was in her late eighties, Jennifer asked her what her favorite age so far had been. "Fifty-five," her grandmother answered, as though there were something magical about this stage of life, some deeper way of knowing from this vantage point. So, in her own fifty-fifth year, Jennifer began to take note. She jotted down her impressions of simple, everyday things that struck her as beautiful or humorous or intriguing and kept a list of all the accomplishments, large and small, that actually mattered to her.These observations became Jennifer's Joy Document, a radical act of reclaiming joy and an exercise in paying attention. When you are determined to find joy, almost anything can becomerevelatory--an Earth Day Whole Foods errand, Claire Saffitz's fruitcake recipe, a harrowing ride in Twinkly Taxi, an evening picnic at Dvořák's Symphony No.
About the Author
A native of Appalachia, Jennifer McGaha lives with her husband, five dogs, twenty-three chickens, and one high-maintenance cat in a tin-roofed cabin bordering the Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina. Her creative nonfiction work has appeared in Brooklyner, Toad Suck Review, Switchback, Still, Portland Review, Little Patuxent Review, Lumina, Literary Mama, Mason's Road, Now and Then, and others. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, mountain biking, sampling local beers, and playing with dogs. From:
