The Truest Love Affair I've Ever Had
Little Joys Vol. 3: On words, a lost music blog, and a narcissist comment I never stopped loving
There are words I love just for how they feel in my mouth. YES — that satisfying Y, a bit chewy in its texture, rolling into the slithering snaky S. BLISS — the way the word itself almost immediately conjures something warm and golden, carefree summer days, languid strolls for the pure please of soaking up the sun. SERENDIPITOUS — it’s just so playful. A word that skips and spins with arms open; its whole purpose is to dazzle you. I spent so much of my youth perfecting my penmanship because I wanted my handwriting to do the words justice. It felt sacrilegious to write beautiful words in a sloppy script.
This is not a new obsession. It is the truest love affair I’ve ever had.
Last week I stumbled across a fellow writer’s Substack. He wrote a beautiful piece which inspired me to leave this comment:
‘For as long as I can remember I have been absolutely enamored with words and what they do to me. The different shifting shades of feeling, it’s visceral, you know? A sentence that leaves you bereft, intrigued, hopeful, curious, brave, and maybe even as if it’s a privilege to be alive.
I discovered this through books of poetry growing dusty on my grandmother’s shelves. Strangers, most of them long dead, made me want to be a writer. Literature and music have been some of the greatest pleasure inducing mechanisms in my life. And not music for music’s sake. It’s the songwriters that get under my skin. Poetry put to music? I’m done for. For years I had a moderately successful music blog. I wrote about how songs made me feel. I had a devoted following and it was such a joy to wax philosophical about how different songs settled in and rearranged my insides.
I got a comment once that said something about “the writer of this blog is clearly a narcissist, so self-obsessed with their own feelings”. Isn’t it so funny what words roll off of us and which ones burrow in and stay a while? It’s one of my all-time favorite internet comments. Pretty sure it was written circa 2012 and here I am 14 some years later still basking in the nuance of my own feelings. Ah, well. I am easily amused.
I left that conversation wondering if my old music blog still existed? I had to hunt for it. Fifteen years of internet archaeology. But I found it, and what I discovered was a treasure trove. A lost world of my own words.
A favorite mantra of mine is: I welcome being surprised and delighted by what this day has in store for me. I’ve said it so long it’s like a fan humming in the background, comforting white noise that I don’t really think about. Its purpose? To train my attention towards being surprised and delighted, of course. Revisiting my blog felt like the universe taking a bow, “for you, my dear, please enjoy.”
Posted by Aj on January 16, 2014
The drum roll has long faded, the fireworks are gone, too. 2014 is well underway.
Let’s invent a new phrase for time flies, shall we? It’s absurdly overused.
Time sneaks by me on tip toes.
Time goes right while I’m looking left.
Time is like a breeze racing across my skin – a quick stroke, a gentle caress, a little rustle through my hair… and as quickly as it comes, it passes, and leaves me wanting more.
I sneeze, I blink, I spend one sleepless night and a whole year is GONE? Just gone.
I don’t know how to explain 2013. A LOT happened this past year. I mean, I moved from Colorado to Texas; it’s not like I was standing still. But somehow I feel like my time was spent just going through the motions, doing what needs to be done to get from where I am to where I want to be.
A brick laying year. A traveling year. Traveling as in — in transit. Not traveling as in exploring the world. It wasn’t a time vortex type year, where the whole year passed in a hasty blur. Instead, 2013 just evaporated. Gone without a trace. Almost as though it was never here. Truly bizarre and a first for me. Sure we may occasionally have a forgotten year, but forgotten when it’s barely even passed? That’s peculiar.
Considering all this, I am immensely grateful to bring you 10 INCREDIBLE bands that increased my listening pleasure this year — bands that prior to 2013 I had no knowledge of. If I have no other proof that 2013 existed, at least I have this.
Cheers to 2014, dear kindreds. May you live each day intentionally.
Remember to step out from behind your keyboard. Put your phone down when you have coffee with a friend. Support the artists you love and pay for the music that fuels your soul. Say thank you and pause to make sure those around you know you mean it. Make eye contact. Laugh often and at the expense of no one. Give the gift of your time — remembering that our days, hours and minutes are numbered; spend them with those who fill you up and inspire you to be the best version of yourself. Dream big and take leaps of faith. Failure, while no fun at all, pales in comparison to the adrenaline rush of living boldly and with courage.
I challenge you to love more fully than you did last year; a heart that expands never goes back to its original size. You can always love MORE and it’s worth the effort. I promise. Embrace these days. Every single one is a chance to start over, to make a friend, to right a wrong, to learn something new, to say grace before a meal (and then savor it), to write a love letter or a thank you note, to befriend your body, to discover new music, to expand your mind by reading more, to share your light, to go where you’ve never gone before but always wanted to …. someday. Never forget, tomorrow is promised to no one.
It would seem 2014 Aj was a little more preachy than this current iteration. ☺
Elizabeth Gilbert has a passage in Eat, Pray, Love about catching her reflection in a mirror and having a moment of pure recognition — oh, I know her — as though she’d forgotten how mirrors worked and simply recognized herself as a friend.
That’s what reading my old words felt like. Quiet recognition. Fondness without nostalgia’s usual ache. The self who wrote that 2014 New Year’s post and the self dashing off a Substack comment in a state of complete flow in 2026 are the same person, in conversation across time, recognizing each other.
12.5 years. A few versions of me have come and gone since then. What hasn't changed? The pure pleasure words evoke. I feel them in my body before my mind has a chance to make sense of them. The joy spills before I can contain it.
Some things you don’t exactly grow into. You simply grow more fully as.
We have funny ways of identifying as what we are in the world. I am a mother. A sister. A friend. I am intentionally unpartnered. I am a Gemini Sun, Cancer Moon, Aquarius Rising. I have tried not to do this: the whole attachment to an identity thing. If you pay attention, attachment can be extremely limiting. You might miss a beautiful opportunity because it isn’t in alignment with the current version of your identity. I prefer to be malleable.
Now there’s a word I LOVE. Malleable. Clay in the hands of the universe. Capable of adaptive change.
However, try as I might, I continuously come back to I am a writer at my core. I think of myself as a writer even in seasons when I’m not writing. It just feels true.
My grandmother’s books are still on their shelves — my shelves now, since she passed in 2016. The spines are even more worn in the places I’ve touched them most. Strangers, even longer dead now, still making me want to identify as a writer.
The thread runs clean and unbroken: from her shelves to a music blog to a comment left on a stranger’s page on a Friday night to whatever Rebel Joy Society is becoming. Words, and appreciation for them, always. The thing that has never changed.
That’s the little joy I’m exploring today. Not finding my old self and marveling at how far I’ve come. But finding her and thinking: I have always considered you a friend.
