Being surrounded by my friends and family. Just listening to them interacting, laughing, sharing. It is the culmination of everything I could have hoped for.

When I was growing up on a farm in rural Alabama, I fell in love with raising chickens. They seem truly innocent. Whenever I'm around chickens, I feel happy.

“Perfect happiness!”—waking in the morning to a clear & benevolent-seeming sky, a view from a window of a beautiful (if overgrown) garden, a cat purring. The excitement of rewriting the previous day’s work, & continuing on from that point energized & hopeful. For a writer, “happiness” isn’t likely to ever be “perfect”—but it is likely to be bound up with the work-in-progress. First drafts tend to be frustrating, exhausting—subsequent drafts sometimes move swiftly, even miraculously. For most adults, “Perfect is the enemy of good”—we learn to appreciate whatever measure of happiness we have, however modest.

Shopping at the organic farmers market, buying whatever’s in season that looks the ripest and most vibrant, and bringing it home to cook with my friends.

A sense of humor and/or the ability to use a toilet correctly.

Entitlement or a lack of manners. Though I find they often flock together.

Wherever I’m sitting, once I finish this questionnaire.

Either living up to or not living up to my potential.

The way I allow myself to talk to myself.