The Resurrection

Welcome! It occurred to me the other day that I started this Choice City Native blog all the way back in August of 2010. It began as a challenge to do one new thing in my hometown every week for a year, which I successfully completed. After that, I posted pretty regularly for three years. I did a bunch of new stuff, and some favorite old stuff, and had a lot of fun writing and taking pictures. Then I decided I needed a little break.

That break went on. And on. For. Years.

I would post occasionally, but for the most part, this blog has been gathering dust for the better part of a decade now.

The other day, I thought, that's it. Time to toss it onto the heap of well-intentioned but forgotten blogs in some cobwebby corner of the internet.  But then I had a change of heart and decided to give it one more run for old time's sake.

Over at Jenny Writes, I started something this year I call Joy Project 2020. You can read the explanation here, but the short version is that I'm using the book Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, by Ingrid Fetell Lee, to inspire more joy in my life. And I thought it might be fun to let that spill over into this blog and report on the elements of joy I find here in my hometown, where I still happily reside. Think of it as Joy: Local Edition.

So, here we go!

The first "aesthetic of joy" in Ingrid's book is Energy, and I don't know if I could find find a better example of joyful energy than the performance of Ballet Folklorico my husband and I recently attended. The choreography, the costumes, the music, it was all spectacular. And, I have to say, the perfect antidote to everything that's happening in the news this month.

We weren't allowed to take pictures or videos (which was actually awesome because no one was waving phones around), so here's a short YouTube clip. I hope you enjoy it, and I also hope you'll stop by periodically to see what other joyous things I discover in my neck of the woods this year!