Sometimes I forget how amazing it feels to share your knowledge and passion with the next generation. For me, it's been quite a few years since my house has been full of crazy and curious kids. It's a much quieter existence since my daughter, now almost 26, has created her own vibrant and independent life. I am super lucky to have an amazing husband, some pretty useless (but incredibly cute and entertaining) fur employees, and a quiet workspace all nestled happily in my home. It's a wonderful environment to live in and work in—so good, in fact, that I truck along without even realizing something might be missing. Yesterday, Savannah showed up to give me a great reminder! It was a "discovery day" at Savannah's school and her mom had contacted me months before to see if I would show her what I do for a living. I was, of course, all in!

We started the day with some French toast while watching the newish Wonder Woman movie. This is how all fierce boss women start their day off, right?

Charged up with breakfast and super hero spirit, we hit the desk to get some work accomplished. I showed her a bunch of things I am currently working on and enjoyed hearing all her wonderfully honest and insightful feedback. She had great questions too! So much lively conversation and lots of laughs with this 11-year-old soul that filled my office space with so much light and energy.

The conversation eventually circled around to my 3 cats and a gingerbread sketch I had shown her earlier. While I paused to take a client call, Savannah started sketching on her own. I returned to find the beginnings of an exceptional drawing of my fur babes meeting a gingerbread man! To say I was excited by her imagination, skill and enthusiasm, is a total understatement. I showed her an easy way to snap a pic of the art with a phone and upload it to the computer. With her in control of the mouse, we loaded the drawing into Photoshop, cleaned it up and copied it over to Illustrator. She set up an artboard and proceeded to learn how to use several tools to trace her drawing, change the colors, remove outlines and to draw additional shapes to begin to add patterns and textures to the cats.

Keep in mind, both Savannah and her mother had warned me early, and more than once, that Savannah was not tech savvy. Oh, but she is!!! She grabbed that mouse like a pro and explored everything. I loved watching her lean in close to see what each tool did and playing with the mouse movements and the click action to see how she could manipulate each to achieve the effects she wanted. I loved watching her perfect shapes by deleting any attempts that did not make the cut. We had a great conversation about the "undo" tool and how it could come in handy in real life too. She was so immersed in what she was doing that at pick-up time her mom and I spent an hour chatting while she happily ignored us.

Savannah will be back—not only because she needs to finish her illustration, but also because her energy reminded me why I love my job so much! Seeing what I do through her eyes was such an energy boost and honestly, something I didn't even know I needed. I need to do this more often and to host more kids from the next generation, even the ones who are not tech savvy.

 

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Looking for joy? I'm right here!

Having the name Joy has always been an interesting experience. Sometimes when I answer the phone, the person on the other end skips the standard “hello” and instead bursts into a resounding chorus of "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!" This is never the start to a bad day. I mean, how can you get angry when someone sings to you?

As a kid, I could never find my name on pencils or little pads of paper or mini license plates in the souvenir shops while on vacation. Then just six months later, at the height of the holiday season, I could easily find my name on everything from cards to tree ornaments to gigantic lawn decorations. Imagine riding down the street and seeing your name lit up over and over again. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world!

Having a name that is also a feeling -- a much sought after feeling -- will always be interesting. Some days my mood does not match my name. You can probably imagine what people say when they run into a sad Joy or a frustrated Joy. I become a walking oxymoron. Being a Joy makes me hyper-aware of the concept of joy and the importance of incorporating that feeling into my daily life, maybe more than others do. I mean, who wants to be an oxymoron?

That may be why I was so happy when my sister-in-law shared this TED Talk with me. It's all about joy, where it hides and how to find it! The speaker, Ingrid Fetell Lee, does an excellent job of explaining joy on a deeper level and offering tangible design examples that we can incorporate into our daily lives and on a bigger scale throughout society. Trust me, it’s 14 minutes of joy you will not regret!

 

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