If you were to think that a band called “Sad Night Dynamite” sounded like two dudes in a basement, you’d be right. But they’re making some decent art down there. Similar the Avalanches, whom we respect and admire, Archie and Josh of SND start with a trove of cool-sounding samples and let the rest shake out from there. “Krunk,” off their new album, is a song created explicitly to fill out the story behind the album’s cover art— it’s a night out gone awry that landed the limo in that lake, if you were wondering, but to me that feels secondary to the dark and boppy beat, undoubtedly spliced together from some deep sound catalog. These two clearly follow their bliss. We might as well follow it, too. Video is here for the full story on that limo.

Are you getting your bliss vicariously these days? Maybe you’re languishing, the “dominant emotion of 2021,” according to this NYT story that will not stop popping up. I get it— we all feel seen. But finding this link everywhere also feels a little like when you’re in a bad mood and some friend of a friend is like “Oh are you HANGRY?” Subtext: We’ve got a word for you and it’s fun to say so we will now apply it at every possible juncture (omg so cute that you find this annoying, you really are hangry).

Anyway, the story hit such a deep click jackpot that it spurred a follow-up piece on flourishing (the opposite of languishing!), complete with a quiz to see where you fall on the “doing-ok” scale. While we all love a quiz, I can’t recommend this one— in a world where we’re all probably languishing, how are we supposed to accurately grade ourselves on questions like, “do you understand you purpose in life,” and “how would you rate your overall physical health?” I realized at the end that I had rated myself all 7s, then went back and sprinkled in the occasional 6 and 8 for variety. It seems to me like, if you have the energy to click on a self-reflection quiz, you can redirect it inward and give yourself a high five.

What I WILL recommend is Heather Havrilesky’s essay on exuberance. (That’s Heather Havrilesky of The Cut’s “Ask Polly” column, which has now gone independent on Substack.) She writes at length (read it!), but to entice you, exuberance is about breaking cycles of obligation and avoidance and instead sinking into moments because you want to be there. Instead of “ugh can this day just be over,” or “I’m working out and seeing friends, why do I still hate everything,” what if you went into every day ready to find joy and wonder?

Thank you, Polly, for justifying most of my life choices. And separately: another emotion! Why are we, competent adults, suddenly having to hammer out definitions of feelings for each other? Maybe because our response to “how are you” for the last year has necessarily come with a shrug or a qualifier, and even though we all learned to be “vulnerable” or whatever we actually just bottled our feelings out of privilege shame or a need to stay afloat. Sure. It’s fine if we need a little warm-up to start accessing these things again. I just find it a little… embarrassing? Maybe that’s the languishing talking. (JK I’m exuberant, as we’ve established.)