It's Weird To Be Happy Right Now
- Jan Flynn
- Jun 28
- 4 min read
“Being intelligent in this timeline feels like being awake during surgery.”
That was the meme my husband showed me this morning as he scrolled through his feed. Finally, I had words to describe how I’ve been feeling.
Not that I’m in physical pain. Nor am I currently struggling in any significant aspect of my life. I’m in good health, my beloved husband is likewise, and my adult children are thriving. I live in a comfortable house in a sweet neighborhood. I have good friends, a lovely and sane family, and I’m financially secure — or as secure as someone in the American 99% can reasonably be.
My debut novel, Griffin Speaker, launched in May, and I’m told it’s already going into its second printing. People are saying nice things about it, and I get to attend book signings and author events and basically live a long-cherished dream.
Last weekend, while visiting my sons and their wives in Colorado, I told them, “I have everything I’ve ever wanted.”
It’s true, and I am deeply, endlessly grateful. I’ve been around long enough to appreciate the smoother stretches on the river of life, because you never know what’s around the next bend.
Yet I’m too often a bit on edge, spinning in a low-level state of heightened vigilance.
I don’t know whether it’s a blessing or a curse to have access to constantly updated information on the state of the country and the planet. The fact is that I do have such access.
Even though I try to vet my sources and titrate my doses of news media and social media, I am bombarded with both. Just like everyone else who hasn’t given up and logged off.
It’s tempting, sometimes, to do just that, to check out and live entirely inside my happy personal bubble.
I just can’t do it. I can’t look away, at least not for long enough to excise from my awareness all the howling, unnecessary pain. The misery caused by the people in charge of my country, and of other countries, whose leaders seem equally determined to remake the world in their own conflicting, despotic images.
So I do what I can, without turning my entire life over to trying to save the world. I call my elected officials so often that their staffers sometimes recognize my voice. I attend rallies and meetings and peaceful demonstrations. I write letters and postcards and give my little bits to the causes and candidates I believe can move the needle.
I try to tell myself that’s enough. I have books to write and deadlines to meet.
And then I read about 50-year sentences handed down to people who protested outside an ICE detention facility in Texas, decades longer than the harshest sentences handed down to any of the convicted January 6 rioters. Whose sentences were either commuted or pardoned anyway.
I watch bodycam footage of a city council meeting in Claymore, Oklahoma, where farmer Darren Blanchard stood to express his opposition to a planned data center. He was arrested and led away in handcuffs. Not because he’d been violent, disruptive, or even disrespectful. He’d exceeded his allotted three minutes by five seconds so he could deliver his printed records to the clerk.
There is no ignoring our murderous misadventure in Iran, our loss of credibility all over the world, the perversion of our national monuments, and the tragically accurate images of what has become of the Reflecting Pool, aka the Strait of Warm Ooze.
I won’t continue the litany.
The point is that the cognitive dissonance, the contrast between my individual experience of the world and what I see and read about, is sometimes so stark that it knocks me off my center. It’s painful and disorienting.
Like waking up during surgery.
I maintain a steadfast belief that contentment and the deep enjoyment of life — at least sometimes — are our birthright, our spiritual inheritance. Happiness is a gift that is not to be squandered, and it has the power to lighten the spirits of everyone with whom we connect.
But these days, it’s not easy to remain suffused with well-being and feel, well, good about it.
Reader, I realize I’m not alone in this. How are you doing with all this? What do you do to protect your peace, or can you? I truly want to know.
Onto brighter topics, because this was, in fact, intended to be a newsletter.
As I mentioned, Griffin Speaker is going into its second printing — and this edition, I’m told, will include a gorgeous map by virtuoso fantasy map artist Virginia Allyn.
While in the Denver area, I had great fun popping into Barnes & Noble in Lone Tree and Tattered Cover Kids in Stanley Marketplace to sign their copies in stock and chat with their booksellers.
On June 23, I attended the Read Freely Project’s kickoff party at Boise’s literary hub, The Cabin. Since 2021, this partnership between the Cabin and indie bookstore Rediscovered Books has highlighted and distributed books that are “diverse, well-written, and yet vulnerable to censorship in the current social climate.”
The project has given away over 6,000 books since its inception, and this year promises to be bigger than ever. I had a lovely time chatting with Cabin members, bookstore staffers, and a couple of delightful school librarians — who said they want to have me visit their school in the fall!
Talking to kids about books is definitely my happy place. No cognitive dissonance allowed.
July is about meeting the copyediting and other deadlines on Book 2 in the series, and spending some time with the extended clan at beautiful Payette Lake in McCall, Idaho.
I have a couple of events upcoming in early August, listed below. If you’re in LA or Orange County, I’d love to see you there!
Saturday, August 8, 4:30PM: I’ll be doing an in-store event at Pages, A Bookstore in Manhattan Beach
Sunday, August 9, at noon: I’ll be signing copies at Barnes & Noble’s Huntington Beach store
I just finished Griffin Speaker and wanted to thank you and everyone else who worked to put this book into the world. It's beautifully written and so relevant. I read about three middle grade books a week. I absolutely loved Griffin Speaker. I hope it inspires a whole new generation of social justice warriors. Bravo.
well said, Jan. congratulations on your successes so far!