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#AggressiveJoy

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Notes on stubborn pleasure in difficult times

A Tactic, Not a Philosophy

At the beginning of 2025, I started using the phrase aggressive joy like a life raft.

It wasn’t aspirational. It wasn’t curated. It definitely wasn’t gentle. It was something I grabbed onto at the start of the year as a way to get through it.

A tactic.
A refusal.
A clenched fist around small good things when everything else felt heavy, uncertain, or out of my control.

Aggressive joy wasn’t about being happy.
It was demanding joy in my life the way I demand caffeine. Death before decaf applies to more than coffee, it turns out.

If the world was going to keep throwing its weight around, then I was going to meet it with stubborn pleasure. Good coffee even when I was tired. Laughing too loud. Wearing the nice thing on a Tuesday. Taking joy personally, almost defensively, like: no actually, this is mine, I am allowed it.

Fake It ’Til You Make It (And Then You Do)

At first, it felt temporary. A coping mechanism. Something to get me through the year. Fake it ’till you make it.

But the problem with tactics that work is that they tend to stick.
The problem is that sometimes you actually make it.

It served me because it wasn’t just one thing.

The Different Kinds of Aggression

Some days I had to be aggressive in seeking joy. Hunting it down on purpose, insisting on it when it didn’t present itself politely. Looking for the joyful thing like it owed me money.

For more days than I care to admit, I had to be aggressive in experiencing it. Fierce and strict with myself. This is today’s joy. Do not tarnish it with melancholy. Do not pre-empt its ending.

Other days I had to be aggressive in enjoying it. Letting myself actually have the moment without shrinking it, downplaying it, or bracing for it to be taken away. Staying with the joy instead of flinching away from it.

And some days, I had to be aggressive in sharing it. Saying the nice thing out loud. Sending the message. Letting other people see me enjoying myself even when the world felt so relentlessly, grindingly… shit.

Especially then.

Because when everything feels heavy, joy can start to feel like something you should keep quiet about. Like it’s indulgent, or naïve, or somehow out of step with reality. Aggressive joy refused that. It said: no, actually, this is part of how I survive.

The Risk of Wanting More

And sometimes it was aggressive because I was afraid of it.

Joy can feel risky when you’ve learned that good things don’t always last. When enjoyment comes with a quiet calculation about how much it might cost you later. There were days when choosing joy felt like tempting fate, like daring the universe to notice I was having a good time.

But I simply couldn’t continue without joy anymore.

I wanted this joy even if tomorrow it hurt me. Even if it made the fall sharper. Even if it meant I’d have something to miss later. I didn’t want to live as though the possibility of loss was a reason to refuse the present.

Choosing It Anyway

So I took it with my eyes open. Not naïvely, not gently, but deliberately. Knowing it might bruise me later and choosing it anyway.

That’s another kind of aggression, I think.
Not denial. Not optimism.
But courage that knows the cost and pays it upfront.

Letting It Become a Habit

Somewhere along the way, aggressive joy stopped being something I only deployed on bad days. It started showing up uninvited on ordinary ones. I’d notice myself choosing delight without first justifying it. Letting myself enjoy something without waiting for permission or better circumstances.

And that surprised me.

Because I don’t think I ever planned for joy to become a habit.

I was raised, emotionally speaking, to treat joy as conditional. Earned. Delayed until everything else was sorted. You rest after the work. You celebrate after the danger has passed. You enjoy yourself once you’re sure nothing bad is about to happen.

Aggressive joy ignores that order entirely.

It says: have the coffee now.
It says: laugh anyway.
It says: take the pleasure even if the future is unclear, even if the work isn’t finished, even if your brain insists you should be more sensible.

There’s something almost feral about that.

I think that’s why I liked it in the first place.

A Quiet Christmas

And here I am now, choosing a quiet Christmas that brings me joy.

No spectacle. No chaos. No performance of cheer. Just rest, small rituals, space and… joy. I’m still faintly confused at how this is allowed, as if someone might tap me on the shoulder and explain I’ve misunderstood the rules.

This is still aggressive joy. Choosing softness in a world that keeps demanding noise. Choosing enough. Choosing what actually fits, even when part of me expects a catch.

I don’t know what next year will need from me. I don’t know whether joy will have to be hunted, defended, shared, or risked again.

But I do know I’m not ready to retire the hashtag.

Not yet.

Sometimes the coffee. Sometimes the axe.

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On favourite cafes, small rituals and the quests that begin with a cup in hand.

The Nearest Cup

My favourite coffee shop isn’t just the closest, though that helps. It’s genuinely good. It sits a few minutes from my front door, right by the train station, perfectly placed between home and the town centre. I like to think I chose it for the beans or the vibe, but the truth is simpler: it’s on the way, and it’s there when I need it.

An americano in a pink cup with an almond croissant on a white plate, places on a speckled cafe table

The Atmosphere

From the outside, it doesn’t look like much. A handful of tables, a cute mirror sign, the steady shuffle of people coming and going. But it has its own rhythm. You hear the roll of suitcase wheels on the pavement, the chatter of office staff escaping their cubicles, the run club on some Saturday morning. The hiss of the steam wand cutting through it all, like they’re trying to take us back to the golden age of train travel. And inside, time does slow down just enough. Long enough to take a breath, to sip, to watch the world hurry past without you.

The Coffee Itself

And the coffee? It’s good. Not just good-for-a-train-station, but actually good. Smooth espresso shots, that taste like someone cared about getting it right. It’s the kind of place you could recommend to a friend and not have to apologize afterwards. Which makes it even better that it’s mine: close enough to be casual, but good enough to feel like a treat.

And then there are the pastries. Real pastries, not the sad shrink-wrapped kind that taste like regret. I’m talking about almond croissants dusted with sugar, the kind that leave a little trail of flakes across the table like edible confetti. Pair one with a cup and suddenly errands feel like indulgence. Coffee in one hand, pastry in the other and even I will concede the day doesn’t look half as daunting.

The Ritual

What I love most is that this place has become my starting line. The stop that marks the beginning of whatever comes next. Some days it’s just errands, other days it’s train journeys or something bigger, but the coffee is always the ritual that kicks it off.

It’s my Rivendell of coffee: a pause before the quest. Sometimes I’m off to the Undying Lands, sometimes I’m trudging toward Mordor, but either way, I start here . A cup in hand and the sense that at least I’m equipped for whatever’s coming. And sometimes it’s not just me. Sometimes there’s a council. A friend across the table, a small circle of confidence before we set off. Not quite the Council of Elrond, but close enough. Plans are made, jokes are shared, and for a moment the world feels steady. And when it doesn’t? Well, someone will loan me an axe.

Closing Sip

It’s not the best coffee I’ve ever had, that title still belongs to some rainy day in Wellington, memory-polished and unreachable, but it’s the best coffee I can get today. And that matters more. Because this place doesn’t just hand me caffeine; it hands me a beginning. A reason to keep moving.

A Rivendell in a paper cup.

And honestly? That’s magic.

Knitting Is My Favorite Distraction

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“First you need to take the yarn in your right hand…“

I didn’t go to a class, or learn from a wise relative passing down ancient yarn secrets. I learned to knit from YouTube — which means my teachers were mostly disembodied hands with suspiciously good manicures.

I was pregnant with my first child, and I wanted to make a baby blanket. It’s so cliche it cool. The blanket was simple, except I choose to do colourwork too, because I can’t possibly start with something plain. It was finished before my baby was born, but did not survive contact with the babies dad putting it directly into the washing machine. Wool on a regular wash. Dear Reader, I cried.

Somehow, despite the destruction of my first finished item, I’m actually pretty good at it. My stitches are neat. My tension’s solid. I’ve tackled socks, lace, different types of colourwork. All the things that make non-knitters look at you like you’ve just solved a maths equation in your head, no problem mate, done it.

The Strange Fate of Finished Objects

Here’s the thing though: I rarely wear or keep anything I make. I can knit a pair of socks that fit perfectly, and then hand them over to someone else like they’re a disposable coffee cup. Scarves, hats, mittens — they all wander off to other people’s wardrobes, while mine remains conspicuously empty of anything I’ve actually made.

The four finished items* in the photo at at the top, all completed in 2024, all about to go off to other people this month**. One will be a birthday gift for someone’s mum, another sent further north to keep a neck warm, one posted onwards to decorate the back of an armchair, and the last to a teenager who is just excited to get a handmade item.

Why Knitting Stuck (When Other Things Didn’t)

There’s something about the rhythm of it that works on my brain in a way most “self-care” activities don’t.

Running collapsed under the weight of one very soggy marathon. Journaling can be as much a way to blame myself for things, as it is a way to off load things that are eating up my mental RAM. And stretching? That’s just me having an argument with my hips***.

But knitting? Knitting sticks. Even when I put it down for months, I always pick it back up, and it always feels like coming back to something useful.

Not Quite Useful, But Definitely Mine

It doesn’t “heal” me. It doesn’t “fix” me. But it does give my restless hands something to do, and my restless mind a puzzle to chew on. There’s a similar metronome of movement that I once found in running, giving me a small pocket of quiet in my brain. It fends off the existential dread with a mantra of “knit, knit, purl.”

Not all hobbies have to be deep and meaningful. Sometimes it’s just loops of yarn and a bit of distraction, and that’s enough.

So yes, I’m self-taught, I’m good at it, and yet my drawers are mostly full of yarn waiting for it’s moment rather than finished objects… because god forbid I ever keep something nice for myself.****

*Yes, two of those finished items are crochet. Don’t be picky.

**No, I’ve not sold them. I don’t need to make money of this, and to be honest the admin of someone covering the cost of the yarn is simply not something I give a fuck about. You like the item? Great. Take it. Enjoy.

***The second child caused that hip problem. I knit them a blanket too. It was much simpler than the first one I made, but did have a cute hood.

****This is probably something I need to think more about.