My Joy is Now

What Happiness Feels Like

“Sitting at a small table, reading and writing surrounded by old stone walls, potted plants, and the sound of falling water - that’s the good life for me. No mountaintop, no empire… just the quiet pleasure of following my curiosity from a book to a thought to a scribble.”

I wrote that at Boulenc in Jalatlaco, then spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town, trying to understand why it struck me so deep. Here’s what I think:

1. For most of my life, I’ve worried that if I let myself enjoy things, I’d lose the edge that carried me this far. Drive built almost everything I’m proud of - a respectable résumé, a library’s worth of self-work, a body tuned for endurance, even the deep love for my friends, family, and partner. If I’m honest, ambition - however motivated - has served me well.

2. Lately, the engine feels different. It’s still running, still vital, but it no longer burns so dirty. It’s starting to hum. What once felt like a hunger to build is softening into a love of life - and everything that fills it. I’m learning for the joy of learning, creating for the sake of creating, living not to prove but to participate.

3. The softness feels… earned. I know it’s not very “spiritual” to say so, but all that striving - the thousand little overcomings, the long cultivation of care - seems like the precondition for this ease. Maybe because of it, I now feel secure enough to let go a bit, to enjoy what I enjoy, and to trust that what’s left to accomplish will unfold in its own time.

It’s a working theory. I believe in drive - I just think at some point we get to graduate over to something smoother, like devotion.

So this week I’ve let my mind wander in whatever direction it pleases - with little to no aim. Where did it take me?

Some interesting places…

Ferns. It’s the last thing I thought I’d get into here, but I picked up a book and learned a bit, and now I can’t stop noticing them. Oaxaca turns out to be a paradise for ferns. It has ~700 species - more than all of North America. A few fun facts:

• Ferns are older than dinosaurs - around 360 million years old - and have barely changed since. They’re ancient. Most of the world’s coal was once fern - entire forests of them, pressed and buried.

• They live two lives! One as the leafy plant we recognize (the sporophyte) and another as a tiny, heart-shaped independent organism hidden in the soil (the gametophyte). This makes them one of the few plants with a double life cycle.

• Many ferns have genomes larger than ours. They hybridize easily, blur species lines, and survive where almost nothing else can. They’re geniuses of adaptation.

• They’re fractal. Their fronds grow in repeating, self-similar patterns - little copies of the whole. Zoom in and it’s still a fern. Nature + brilliant math.

I grew up bilingual, but Spanish still slows me down in an interesting way. My sentences feel deliberate, like crossing a river on stepping stones - I can sense where my vocabulary ends and where the reach for words begins.

So I stopped by a bookshop here and picked up a few things. The hope? To tune my ears to the register of the cultured Mexican - someone with taste and rhythm in their speech. I’m collecting the idioms you’d hear at exhibition openings or thoughtful dinner tables - poetic but grounded, charming but not pretentious.

It has me asking:

What’s the verbal equivalent of linen clothes and mezcal served in a clay cup?

I don’t like packaging that’s trying too hard to sell me something - the perfume with a supermodel, the cleaning detergent with a muscle cartoon, the energy drink with claw marks and lightning bolts. It’s not just ugly - it’s dishonest (and it assumes I’m too dumb to sense the mirage).

But I’m not against marketing - only the cynical kind. I admire when it’s done well - when it lures you in gently, not to deceive, but to reveal. There’s a difference between seduction and manipulation: one invites you closer to something worth knowing; the other distracts you from the fact that there’s nothing there.

This week I found a line of ferments and preserves - Suculenta - that does exactly that. Brown paper. Modest type. Small botanical drawings printed on the top. Nothing shouts. You get the sense that the same hands that cooked the fruit also wrapped it. Packaging as continuation - not costume.

There’s a kind of morality to that. Not the moralizing kind, but the kind that respects attention - that refuses to waste it. And I can’t help but think: maybe self-help books could use a rebrand. Less adrenal urgency, more quiet confidence. Fewer shouting promises, more jars of truth wrapped in paper and string.

Maybe the next era of marketing should feel more like a farm pantry than a billboard. Hushed. Grounded. Honest about what’s inside. If all marketing pointed us toward nourishment this way, maybe it would make us want to take care of ourselves, rather than feel like we’re not enough.

Yesterday I had the kind of moment I’ve been craving without knowing it: a proper, old-fashioned, man-to-man chat with a barber - fittingly named “Dante.”

He sat me down, draped the cape, and after a few pleasantries, we were off. Between the snip of scissors and the last scrape of a straight razor, we covered ground - history, culture, politics, psychology, women. Romantic rancheras filled the room as late light pooled on the green-grey and pink cantera walls, glinting off vintage mezcal bottles and sepia portraits of the city.

Needless to say, I sat content.

“Range” is a concept Vas and I are fond of, and this hour gave me my fill: a little dust on my boots from hiking the night before, some ink on my fingers from playing with stamps in the afternoon, and the pleasure of feeling like a gentleman of the old world: at ease, freshly shaven, and talking life over with a brief companion.

My uncle once told me that what he missed most during lockdown were the weekly chats with his banker. I didn’t understand it then. Now I do.

I’m happy with the way Vas and I are traveling. We’re far from the usual script and closer to something like expat dharma bums, unhurried and in tune.

Our time divides itself naturally: solo expeditions for each of us (libraries and art studios for me; markets and climbing gyms for her), then shared detours - gallery visits, night walks, and long dinners where we trade what the hours apart taught us.

It’s independent but intertwined.

I just realized it’s been ten days, and the only pictures we’ve taken together are these silly booth strips - because the props were ridiculous, and we couldn’t resist. Beyond that, no posing. We’ve treated Oaxaca less like a destination and more like a lab and a playground - a space to test what happiness feels like.

Anyway, this is as much a note to myself as it is to her:

Let’s keep it up honey.

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