This Prompts Joy: Week of July 22

The internet has long been accused of being a toxic, harmful place, full of conflict and anonymous trolls. It’s hard to deny that, in a general sense, but let us brag on ourselves a little bit. Because since our launch in September 2016, The Prompt has largely avoided that awful spirit, instead finding real personal connection through creative writing, good ideas, and good people. Honestly, it’s been quite a tonic to meet strangers on the internet that are so deeply earnest and good in their souls. 

To extend that positive vibe into your lives a bit more, we’re starting a new content segment called This Prompts Joy, in which we will each share something positive or worthwhile that got us through the week. Each week, we will publish a miniprompt of the things that filled our cold, bleak, post-apocalyptic hearts with happiness, pride, gratitude, peace, interest, amusement, and so on.

The Prompt Mag: Proof that the internet isn’t completely terrible™

Jillian Conochan

In my medium-length life in which I am very well-known for my coffee consumption, never did I think I would come to appreciate instant coffee… and yet, here I am, sipping an iced cup of Taster’s Choice.

It started a few years ago when COVID had us looking for ways to fancify quotidians. Maybe you were a sourdough household. Maybe corn ribs, pancake cereal, or smashed vegetables were more your speed. For me, it was fluffy coffee, which necessitated instant coffee (+ equal part sugar, water, and a whisk). The taste, at least in this format, was not the same sandy, saccharine granules I got in a little welcome-to-college kit back in the 1900s.

Fast forward to present day and my cold brew, which, goddamn! requires a lot of coffee grounds. I started supplementing my daily dose with a scoop of instant coffee or occasionally just a full cup of coffee crystals and I’m pleased to report this ain’t your grandaddy’s Sanka. Trust me! I have the word COFFEE tiled on the floor of my mansion.

Josh Bard

I’ve read a few good books this summer so far. Demon Copperhead was an incredible novel but so heavy that it’s kind of hard to suggest that it prompted joy. I am not that dead inside, yet, but talk to me in November when Demon Copperhead may feel like the feel-good movie of the year.

But I also read North Woods, which did prompt joy. It was interesting, weird, unique, and extremely creatively written. I often didn’t know exactly where the book was taking me, but author Daniel Mason always brought it back together. I would recommend it to anyone, especially open-minded readers who don’t need an easy read.

Jay Heltzer

I’ve got two this week!

One – Last April I traveled to the upper midwest and Yelp led me to an Irish pub. Although the bangers and mash was B+ good, it was the pickled egg appetizer that lives rent-free on my taste buds to this day. Since then, I have tried to duplicate the magic of that briney goodness and whether hit or miss, I ask you WHERE THE HELL HAVE PICKLED EGGS BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE? What a fantastic, protein-pleasure of a snack. My third batch sits in the fridge now, and I can’t wait!

Two – Drum corps season is in full swing. You say “marching band” like it’s a dirty word. I say “feh” in your general direction. I’m amazed as the Bluecoats reinvent the art form, or listen to the crowd favorite (and best name in all of DCI) Phantom Regiment melt our faces with passion and power, or my beloved Santa Clara Vanguard rise from the ashes to bring their honor back to DCI finals. Find a clip on YouTube and thank me later. 2024 is a great year for drum corps.

Sarah Razner

I am not a poet. Try as I may to string together lyrical lines, I fall short of the verses that poets weave, evoking beautiful imagery, and breaking hearts with one word.

Instead, I am left to appreciate their poetry, and this past week, amid so much political turmoil, I remembered one of my favorites: “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith. Written in 2016, the poem is told from the perspective of a mother, who shares the many things she tries to keep from her children so they can look at the world and see the good in it, rather than the things to fear or hate. “The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broke, bagged and sunk in a lake,” Smith writes.

Although it would be easy to look at those lines and think “wow, life really is terrible,” Smith offers a different perspective.

“I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.”

It is these final lines that I frequently return to, and this week did once again, reminding myself that amidst the bad, there is hope and joy to be found, and we can be the ones to help share it.

Is there something you can’t stop humming, sharing, refreshing, etc? Get in touch for your chance to get published on The Prompt! This Prompts Joy runs weekly.