Simple Joys is a series of weekly articles I’ve been writing about my own life since 2011. I write about the five things, people, experiences, or the like that have been a great part of the previous week. Unknowingly a one-off blog took a life of its own and gained an incredibly loyal following. There are hundreds of my Simple Joy articles online.
In 2012 I started covering NASCAR races as media. It seemed a natural question for me to ask my interviewees what their Simple Joys were as I was truly interested and thought my readership would be, too.
This past weekend, at the conclusion of the GoBowling.com 400 at Pocono Raceway, I finally had the opportunity to ask Dale Earnhardt Jr. what his Simple Joys are.
Earnhardt Jr.answered without hesitation with “Amy” as his first response referring to his girlfriend Amy Reimann. He followed with the following list: “Redskins, my family, drinking a cold beer.”
Earnhardt Jr. said, “There’s a lot of them right now; everything about life right now’s been great.” He told the media center that both his personal and professional life are doing “really good”. He said he’s, “grown a lot in the last four or five years learning from this group.”
As witness to Earnhardt Jr.’s sweep at Pocono Raceway in 2014 and the ease with with he answered what his Simple Joys are, it seems that he is in the prime of his life.
And Simple Joys is gaining a NASCAR following now as Race Hub has taken soundbites from Kyle Busch at Homestead in 2012 answering it in a frustrated way at first and then in a more genuine way and this week the Earnhardt Jr. soundbite.
It’s my bet that all of the drivers I’ve asked over the years are thinking that they too have been forced to think about their Simple Joys upon meeting me.
As I close my Simple Joys article every week, so shall I close this article…
Wishing you all a week filled with Simple Joys.