Joyful Anyway is a 2026 book by Kate Bowler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a 2026 book by Kate Bowler titled Joyful Anyway. Google Books has a preview of it. On page 155 she has a Venn diagram for Joy from Hope, Gratitude, and Delight overlapping, as is shown above via a colorized version.

 

On page 156 in Chapter 28 she says:

 

“Joy (According to Researchers)

 

1] Joy is uncontrollable. It ranks lowest out of emotions in its ability to be yanked into your life by sheer force of will.

 

2] Joy is not the same thing as gratitude, exactly, but grateful people are more likely to experience it. And it will make you grateful in the end.

 

3] Joy is random. You can get used to happiness (see also hedonic treadmill), but you can’t get used to joy. Because you can’t get used to a surprise.

 

4] Joy might be random, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be more prepared. Theologian Karl Barth wrote that we should hold ourselves ‘in readiness for joy,’ On your mark..get set..joy.

 

5] You can almost make joy a character trait. Not quite, because joy is nit permanent. But you can become a more and more joyful person. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

 

6] Joy will make us hopeful. A joyful person will have the ability to see possibilities and grace and even the redemption of things that feel completely ruined.

 

7] Joy will delight the crap out of us, If you’re not dlighted, it’s not joy. It’s probably indigestion.

 

8] If we want to know if it’s joy we should look for feelings of (a) harmony, (b) aliveness, (c) transcendence, and (d) unselfconsciousness.

 

9] Joy can be easier and easier to experience. We just have to practice.”

 

And on page 215 in Chapter 40 she says:

 

“Ways to (Almost) Guarantee Joy for No Reason

 

Welcome to what my sister Maria calls No Reason Season. Congratulations! You are getting off the superhighways of efficiency! You are saying ‘No!’ to usefulness! Stop sprinting toward self-mastery and have some experiences that are not for any reason except your delight.

 

1} Host a taste-test party. It can be for anything – ketchup, generic colas, best vanilla ice cream, fast-food French fries. Remove the labels and have everyone rank their favorites.

 

2} Pretend you are in a sitcom the next time you meet a stranger. Life is much funnier if you imagine a laugh track playing in the background.

 

3} Dress as your favorite nineties album cover. Do it solo. Or invite others in on the fun. (secondhand clothing stores have everything you need for time travel.)

 

4} Make up weirdly specific songs about your pet. Or sing seventies love ballads to them, inserting their names: ‘Hold me closer, Tiny Hazelnut!’

 

5} Wear your most sparkly outfit to your next appointment or meeting. Declare it is Sequin Friday or Sparkle Tuesday and be surprised other people didn’t get the memo.

 

6} Fold your toilet paper into tiny origami like at a fancy hotel. Bonus points if you can figure out how to make animals out of towels and surprise your roommate with a towel sloth on the counter.

 

7} Keep premade cookie dough in the freezer for any and all occasions. Sprinkle a little salt on the top because who can stop you?

 

8} Pick a walk-up song for everyone in your home or at the office. Play it as they come in, as LOUDLY AS YOU WANT.

 

There is more. There is more. There is more. There is more. (repeated 39 times)”

 

 

Voices of Experience is a worthwhile blog from the National Speakers Association for public speakers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a worthwhile blog at the web site of the National Speakers Association with a web page which is titled VE Voices of Experience ^TM: A Blog for Speakers by Speakers. The superscript TM really is a lie – they abandoned trying to register a US trademark on October 13, 2023. It had been previously described as for educational services, namely, providing non-downloadable podcasts in the field of public speaking to its members. The web page footer adds that:

 

“The content in Voices of Experiences[sic] is written by NSA members, for NSA members. The opinions and representations made within each article do not necessarily reflect the opinions or position of the association itself.”

 

One post at this blog from the well-known speaker Harvey Mackay on February 4, 2026 is titled ABCs of Public Speaking, and it has section headings titled: A is for audience, B is for body language, C is for creativity, etc. There is another post on July 9, 2026 titled Don’t Let Public Speaking Leave You Tongue-Tied and a still another post on September 30, 2025 titled The Art of the Presentation. Mr. Mackay had been discussed on page 18 in the December 1993 issue of Toastmaster magazine in an article titled Meet the Five Outstanding Speakers.

 

On September 2, 2023 I blogged about how The National Speakers Association stopped publishing the free print version of their bimonthly Speaker magazine. The last issue was for January-February 2023.

 

The image of ABC blocks came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

An inspiring 2024 book by Stephen Petrow titled The Joy You Make: Find the silver linings – even on your darkest days

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the Meridian Library I got, via interlibrary loan, an inspiring 2024 book by Stephen Petrow titled The Joy You Make: Find the silver linings – even on your darkest days. There is a Google Books preview up to page 24. It has twenty-eight brief, unnumbered chapters that are titled as follows:

 

01] The Joy of Gratitude                           1  

02] The Joy of Authenticity                      11

03] The Joy of Memory                           22

04] The Joy of Freudenfreude                 31

05] The Joy of Taking a Pause                38

06] The Joy of Solitude                           45

07] The Joy of Cooking                           59

08] The Joy of Getting Lost                     71

09] The Joy of Your Name                      79

10] The Joy of Solidarity                         88

11] The Joy of Blue                               102

12] The Joy of Writing by Hand            110

13] The Joy of Perspective                   118

14] The Joy of the Cancer Ward          127

15] The Joy of Play                              137

16] The Joy of Doing Nothing              146

17] The Joy of Imperfection                 155

18] The Joy of a Christmas Miracle     164

19] The Joy of Being Single                 175

20] The Joy of a Dance Party              184

21] The Joy of the Mundane                191

22] The Joy of Reading                        198

23] The Joy of Sex                                208

24] The Joy of Aging                             219

25] The Joy of Uncertainty                    229

26] The Joy of the Dark                         238

27] The Joy of Julie                               248

28] Epilogue                                          259

 

At the end of Chapter 17 about The Joy of Imperfection, starting on Page 161 he discusses:

 

“Learning to Embrace Your Imperfections

 

It’s so easy, so natural, and so unhelpful to focus on our own flaws. We make mistakes, we don’t have magazine-cover bodies, we haven’t had the career successes that we wanted. Other people’s lives seem perfect, and ours don’t measure up. Just spend five minutes on Instagram, where vacations, parties, pets, homes, and even our friends’ kids appear perfect. Anne Lamott has given this conundrum much thought, writing. ‘Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.

 

What can we do so we don’t hate what makes us who we are? Even better, to accept and embrace our true selves? And best of all, to learn how to love ourselves the way we are? For sure, there are a lot of New Agey philosophy types out there saying things like ‘You are special just as you are,’ and ‘Your flaws are your strengths in disguise.’ I just don’t know how helpful these mantras are in changing attitudes. Here’s where I chose to start:

 

Make a list of people and things you believe are perfect. Do your neighbors have a neat and well-kept house? Put them on the list. How about your boss and their well-behaved and well-dressed kids? Ditto. What about that Instagram friend who waxes to the moon about a recent vacation? List them all. Rhen, in a second column, write the mirror image of that supposed perfection. That tidy house – with a huge mortgage – maybe it takes hours of cleaning and neatening every week. Guess what? Maybe you don’t want to do that. Your apartment is a little more cluttered, but you have more time to spend on what you want. Stop making comparisons. Understand that your imperfect home may be just right for how you want to live. Do the same for everything and everyone you think of as perfect. What are you learning? Jot it down.

 

Now make a list of things you worry are imperfect about yourself. What are the mirror images of those? Your nose is too small, your ears too large? They are the genetic remnants of your ancestors, handed down to you as reminders that they once lived. You goofed up at work? With any luck, you went through an educational experience, free of charge. Yelled at the kids instead of being a perfect TV sitcom parent? Perhaps you taught them the lesson that even parents have limits (and yourself a lesson in when to take a breath and walk away).    

 

Try to offset a perceived flaw with something that’s positive. For the longest time, I avoided looking at the scar that runs from my breastbone to below my navel (thank you, metastatic cancer). ‘A scar is a physical deformity, it’s a physical difference,’ Jeffrey Marcus, the chief of pediatric plastic surgery at Duke University, explained to me. People too often draw conclusions or make assumptions about attractiveness, intelligence, even capability based on something they see. In my case, I hated that scar so much I’d get dressed in the dark. Over time, as the scar faded along with those frightening memories, what had once been a stark reminder of my illness became something else altogether: a testament to my survival. Reading Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses one afternoon, I stopped in recognition when I came upon this line: ‘Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.’ Or, as Duke’s Jeff Marcus told me, ‘Some differences can be positive, too.’

 

The fact is that life is full of trade-offs, a mix of our own choices and the hand genetics dealt us. We are all creatures of this moment in history, a marvelous soup of traits both good and bad, and we make of it what we can. I hope that once you see your lists, it will become more obvious to you that nobody is perfect. From there, it’s a step or two to realize you’re good enough. And maybe that’s just fine – for now.”

 

The silver-lined cloud image by Christine Matthews came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

What the heck is a Sword of Domiciles? And where in the heck is the Straight of Hormuz?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What happens when you dictate a blog post and then do not bother to proofread it? You have nonsense that just confuses your readers! There is a post by Bob ‘Nugie’ Neugebauer at the Gem State Patriot News blog on August 30, 2026 titled You Think Affordability is Trump’s Fault? Think Again.

 

His twelfth paragraph says:

 

“The War with Iran has been the most contentious of Trump’s Decisions: We are 6 months into this war and the cost is approximately $200 Billion and is surely going to be higher when u [sic] include the cost of rehabilitation and hospital stays for those who have been injured. The real question was and still is “Were we going to allow Iran to have a Nuke and hold it over not only our heads but that of any country they decided to threaten. Allowing Iran to have a nuclear device and deliver system was like the sword of Domiciles being held over every one’s head. Was President Trumps decision the right one.  Only time will tell but he removed the immediate threat of Iran being a nuclear power and the oil from the Middle East is once again flowing through the Straight of Hormuz.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A domicile is a residence, so a sword of a domicile might be on the mantel above a fireplace, as shown above. Bob meant to instead refer to a Sword of Damocles, hanging overhead by a thread, also shown above via a painting and described by Evan Andrews at History.com in an article on May 27, 2025  titled What was the Sword of Damocles?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Straight of Hormuz, shown above, is what you get when you chop off the top of Oman and straighten out the Strait of Hormuz.

 

The fireplace and sword came from Wikimedia Commons, as did the painting of the Sword of Damocles and map of the Strait of Hormuz.