19. Always Happy, With Jocelyn Park

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Jocelyn talks about welcoming new folks to Lancaster, finding balance, and the very many amazing things that make her happy.

Show Notes

Jocelyn Park is a writer, traveler, artist, designer and community builder. She is a dreamer and achiever all wrapped into one. Professionally, Jocelyn is a designer, project manager and founder of Lancaster Transplant. She wants you to know how much she loves farm animals.

The amazingly unorthodox, fluid conversation with Jocelyn was definitely a treat! She kicks it off by giving us a list she created long ago of things that make her happy. Here goes:

  1. Drinking coffee from her favorite mug, which changes with her mood. Right now, it’s a mug with a bear on it that says “Shunk, PA”.
  2. Severe thunderstorms
  3. A breath of fresh air
  4. Surprises
  5. Music in the morning
  6. Making a friend laugh (kind of like she’s been doing with Bernardo throughout the entire podcast.)
  7. Animals and their bizarre ways
  8. A shower
  9. Swimming holes
  10. Friends
  11. Family
  12. Yoga
  13. Hikes
  14. Bikes
  15. Writing
  16. Drawing
  17. Creating
  18. Living in the moment
  19. Emailing a random email for the first time. (This email was randomly added to the bottom of her list and Jocelyn has no clue who it is. More when she emails the person and gains further details!)

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. We learned a lot more about what makes Jocelyn happy as we continued our conversation. This includes physical mail aka snail mail, particularly from her mom who to this day sends her greeting cards. Jocelyn tells us the best was a “Hey! Heard you moved!” card sent when she lived in Australia.

“I live in a great shiny world and I want people to have that too.”
Jocelyn Park on @thehappypodcast
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Speaking of which, living in Australia often made her homesick for her family. She makes up for that now by taking “girls retreat” trips to the Hershey Hotel with the ladies in her family. Together they enjoy massages and eat muffins all day long.

Music also makes Jocelyn happy. One of her favorite bands is the Fruit Bats who she saw recently at Boot & Saddle.

You’ve probably gotten by now that lots and lots of things make Jocelyn happy. In fact, she mentions that making her happy is really easy. She feels this isn’t the case for everyone. People often go through difficult, deep things regularly. Therefore, she tries her best to make the world a better place by connecting people to one another and being welcoming. Enter Lancaster Transplant.

It was born from the necessity to make people who just moved to Lancaster feel welcomed. They hang out by organizing all different types of events with the intention of people getting to know one another. One of the things that make her happiest about this project is making newcomers to the group introduce themselves, even when they are reluctant to do so.(She’s found they end up having a blast.)

Jocelyn explains to us a little more about the dynamic of living in Lancaster. It’s a pretty awesome small city with fun things to do and great places to eat. She stands out, both professionally and personally because it’s small enough, allowing her to be pretty well known and connect to many people. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have such easy access to spending time outdoors.

“I think I’m actively collecting and curating stuff that makes me happy.”
Jocelyn Park on @thehappypodcast
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What doesn’t make her happy? The big things. Policy and stuff that needs to change are hard, she says, and take a lot of work. So, she reverts to the simple things from the initial list we provided. She knows if she doesn’t revert to them she can get wrapped up in the big things. They can be super overwhelming and she likes to be reminded that, even when life gets hard, not everything sucks.

Jocelyn goes on to tell us that balance makes her happy. She is often on opposite sides of the spectrum in feeling (depending on the day she could naturally be one way or the other.) Thus, merging the two is important. When she is swinging back and forth, she stops at any given moment and finds her center. And now that she is more aware of her highs and her lows, her ups and downs, she feels more level and willing to let go of the things that don’t serve her.

Final thoughts on what makes her happy? Herself, The Stinky Cheese Man, kombucha, and the word smile. She’s the happiest when she is in the woods.

You can find Jocelyn by visiting lancastertransplant.com, emailing her at jocepark@gmail.com or by visiting her blog! Whatever you do, don’t send her Facebook messages (She’s not a fan of those!).