Sing Your Own Setlist
Snatching Joy from the Jaws of Despair
“We should go clubbiiiing!,” was not, perhaps, the most obvious suggestion for a bunch of women in their 30s and 40s who value their high waisted pants and 10 PM bedtimes in equal measure.
But Priya Parker, the expert gatherer, taught us that some of the best parties start out as jokes. And indeed, all it took was that single declaration, a healthy dose of nostalgia, and the planning skills of a teacher for “The Clerb” to be stenciled into my calendar for a weekend in early October.
Of course, we went to dinner first, like proper mom-friends do. We talked about supplements for brain fog and the books we were reading and that one TV show that got surprisingly spicy. We’re grown ups, so we pre-gamed with hydration packets and drank full glasses of water with our solitary cocktails.
Then, we headed next door to the bar, and that’s when things got weird. We were expecting a dimly lit room with flashing lights, music thumping in our chests, a crowded dance floor, maybe even a fog machine for old time’s sake. You know, this:
Instead, what we stumbled into looked more like the small town bar from Cheers. The lights were very much on, the dance floor was very much empty, and Oh, it was also karaoke night, and a group of what seemed to be regulars, mostly middle aged guys, were dominating the set list with angsty bangers from the 90s.
I immediately felt myself deflate. This was decidedly not the vibe. But there was also a sense, from these women who fought to have this sliver of time for fun and play and silliness on a Friday night, that nothing would stop us from having the time of our lives.
So we settled into tables and added our names to the queue, which would now be sprinkled with beloved classics like “Bye, Bye, Bye” and “No Scrubs.”
And then we danced. We filled up the dance floor in what felt like broad daylight and sang our own set list. We shimmied and shook and dropped it low enough times that most of us would be feeling it in our knees the next day.
We even danced to the regulars’ picks, screaming out the lyrics to “Teenage Dirt Bag” and collapsing into giggles when a man got up and sang the entirety of “Booty Man” as straight faced as if it was a funeral dirge. (Please, look it up and try not to at least chuckle).
We left at the reasonable hour of 11 PM, tired and happy. It was not what we expected, but we made the joy happen anyway.
I’ve thought a lot about all the things working against us that night. The logistics alone could’ve kept many of us away. The arranging of child care and figuring out what to wear and dodging the darts of cold and flu season could’ve easily kept us at home, alone, on our respective couches.
Then there’s the emotional and physical stuff we all carry. This group of women has been through some things. We’ve struggled with infertility, struggled in our marriages, lost parents, lost friends, lost children. We have anxiety and hot flashes and stressful jobs and back problems.
And then our plan was thwarted, the well-lit, sparsely populated bar almost comically different from our expectations.
But we danced anyway.
We came with all our stuff, all of our grief and weariness and worry, and we danced anyway. We didn’t leave all of those parts of us at the door, didn’t suddenly become our lighter, naive, early 20s selves. We brought all of it with us, and decided to have fun anyway.
I’ve long known that grief is not for the faint of heart, but it turns out joy isn’t either.
Sure, sometimes joy falls into our laps, spontaneous and bubbly. It’s lovely when it happens, but we can’t count on that kind of joy to sustain us.
More often than not, we have to fight for joy, wrestling for every scrap we can find in the middle of our busy schedules and fogs of exhaustion. Sometimes joy needs a producer and a director, someone to bring the vision to life. Sometimes it needs a whole cast and crew to pull it, kicking and screaming, from the very centers of our complicated lives.
And that kind of joy—the kind we make together, in community—the kind we etch out of the hardest seasons of our lives—has an aftertaste. It lingers. It sustains. It nourishes us long after the coffee date or party or walk through the woods.
My only intention for 2025 was to acknowledge the joy at least as much as I acknowledge the pain. And listen, the list of pain is a mile long these days. My brain has no problem keeping a running tab of all that feels broken, cruel, and unjust in our world today.
But like we mark a death with a gravestone, maybe we ought to have joystones as well. Markers of the good stuff. A place we can return to when we need a reminder that goodness not only exists, but that we can help create it, for ourselves and for others.
This is my reminder that joy is not for people who have easy lives, but for anyone willing to put their attention and energy toward it. This marker is for The Clerb of 2025, and a reminder that yes, sometimes the best gatherings really do start out as jokes.