stripytights

Honestly in large part, fandom itself is a happy place for me. Seeing other people enjoy things unashamedly, seeing worth placed in things that are of no monetary value, that are solely for benefit of enjoyment for yourself and others is a really cool thing to me - it has been since I was a child and it remains so. Individual fanworks themselves can also be things of beauty and joy forever. I don't pretend that fandom is solely a place of joy for me - there's plenty of aspects that frustrate me, but they are far outweighed by the fact that getting frustrated, getting anxious or angry or motivated are all parts of engagement and caring about things that can make me feel that way. Indifference is the killer. There's a reason I keep coming back.>

Outside of that, for me my happy places are mostly solitary. Rock climbing in the past two years occupied some of the same space of, if not creativity, then belief in what you can do. For a long time after some old medical history, I believed that my body was limited in ways that when I stretched, turned out not to be real. I've never ever been happier to be proved wrong in my entire life, and every time I climb (mostly bouldering at the moment) I feel thankful for that.

Reading will always be the first and oldest thing that gives me joy and keeps me sane. I treasure the books I read, and the portability of them, that you can carry around that isolation with you. And on top of that even though it's such a solitary activity, the connections are so great. When you meet someone who loves the same book, who can talk about it, it's an amazing feeling, the enjoyment shared and repeated of the initial book and then that discussion.