Making Space for Joy in 2025: Choosing Defiance and Connection

Making Space for Joy: A Subversive Act for 2025

2024 was a relentless storm—heavy and unyielding. Joy felt distant, buried under the chaos of the world and the weight of 2024. But joy, stubborn and surprising, found its way in anyway. It peeked out in the quiet comfort of writing, the warmth of a friend’s understanding, and the small thrill of hearing a song that hit just right. If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that joy isn’t just a fleeting feeling—it’s a choice, a small rebellion, and a reclamation of what truly matters. As we step into 2025, I want to hold onto that lesson—and invite you to join me in making space for joy.

Finding Joy in Small Moments

Joy often masquerades as something grand—like a big celebration or a life-changing event—but it’s often in the quieter, smaller acts. But this year taught me that joy often lives in the small things. It’s in the way sunlight filters through your window on a winter morning, the perfect beat drop in a favorite song, or the first sip of coffee after a long night. These moments don’t fix the world, but they whisper that not everything is broken.

For me, joy was found in small, grounding moments—quiet writing sessions, laughing with friends, collaborating with students, chaotic zoom calls with online friends, and savoring my friend’s home-baked cookies and muffins (or delicious chocolate birthday cake).

Or simply going outside and seeing the beauty of nature.

It wasn’t always easy to find, but when I let myself notice those moments, they became anchors—pulling me back to myself when the chaos threatened to take over.

Joy as Resistance: A Radical Act

If 2024 taught me anything, it’s that joy isn’t just a feeling—it’s a quiet, yet radical, act of defiance. In a world that constantly demands our productivity, compliance, and despair, choosing joy is a way of saying no. It’s a loud, resounding no to burnout, hopelessness, and systems that prioritize profit over people.

There’s power in reclaiming joy on our terms. It’s in the small rebellions, like taking a day off when you’re told to push through, or indulging in a creative project that has no purpose beyond making you happy. And it’s in the joy of connection—moments where dear friends and I came together in our struggle against oppression, finding fuel for our activism with both determination and joy.

One of the most powerful examples of this was our podcast, Podcast by ARMY (https://www.youtube.com/@PodcastbyARMY). Over the year, my undergraduate student and I recorded episodes about BTS, ARMY, fandom, and research. Through this project, we created a space to amplify voices, share candid conversations, and connect through meaningful, joyful collaboration.

One episode, in particular, stands out. It was a conversation with Zuzu, a member of the ARMY 4 Palestine team and a Palestinian ARMY. We discussed Al-Thawabet, A4P’s goals, and the experience of being an ARMY in this moment in time. I spent a week in community with Zuzu while recording this episode, and it was the most meaningful week of 2024 for me—an experience I will treasure for a long time.

For me, fandom has been one of those spaces where joy thrives as resistance. It’s inherently subversive—a collective of people coming together to celebrate and create outside of traditional structures. But this past year, for myself and many others, our fandom has also been a site of trauma, where connection sometimes came with pain. Navigating these contradictions has been difficult, yet it’s deepened my understanding of global struggles and shown me my own areas for growth.

It will take a lot of talking and writing to work through all my feelings about that. But fandom has also allowed me to stay connected globally, to deepen my understanding of oppression from around the world, and to see, like a mirror, the shortcomings in myself and where I can be better.

Carrying Joy into 2025: A Commitment to Defiance and Hope

As we step into 2025, I want to carry this understanding of joy forward. I want to continue making space for the small, subversive moments of joy that remind me what’s possible. I want to nurture joy in the spaces I create—whether that’s through writing, teaching, or simply showing up for the people I care about.

And I hope you’ll do the same. Joy doesn’t need to be extravagant, but it deserves intentional space in our lives—a space we protect, nurture, and prioritize as an act of self-care and defiance. It’s worth fighting for, even in the smallest ways.

Let’s Make Space for Joy Together

How will you create space for joy in 2025? What small, subversive acts of joy will fuel you in the year ahead? Share your reflections in the comments, reach out to me directly, or simply pause and ask yourself: where does joy fit into your life, and how will you nurture it in 2025?

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