In February, I posted a two month check in so I decided to try that again. It was a nice mile marker for me. I used to really love doing my annual review at work. Not necessarily for the accolades, but I always enjoyed the exercise of reviewing my goals, writing down what I had achieved, where I could improve the following year, those goals that became no longer important, and just celebrating moving the needle. 

So, it’s been 4 months, and this will be post #16. 

I’ve written over 12,600 words, and welcomed 800 people to the site. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would read what I wrote, so this feels astronomical! I appreciate every single one of you. Those who show up every week with me, and those who get here when they can.  Your likes, comments, and emails and conversations make my day in ways you cannot know. Thank you!

I’ve committed to trying at least one new thing a month, so my list for March and April includes: 

• Shopping fast – I avoided big box stores for 40 days, for all but the necessary essentials (my daughter went up a shoe size in late March, and I did get her some new sneakers so as not to impede healthy foot growth). This felt so incredibly freeing, I might change some habits based on my experience.
• Sound bath – I visited a local metaphysical shop to lie on the floor for an hour and listen to someone play the singing bowls and other instruments. It was WILD! You can listen to singing bowls online, but that did not prepare me for the experience of hearing and feeling them in person. The sound is literally so strong it vibrates your whole being. 
• Taught a virtual public speaking workshop – this was so much fun. I’ve mentored many people in public speaking before, usually 1:1. This class, taught on Zoom, was a first for me. Watching the class talk through their fears and their goals was incredible, and I loved watching them open up and share. 
• Actually followed up on some of those “we should hang out sometime” comments and had some really fun lunches, emails, and phone calls. 

I feel like I could write more about some of these, and maybe this month I will. 

I also just saw a post by Liz Moody about her “Novelty Rule” and it struck a chord (side note: I’m always a bit suspicious of motivational speakers who sell supplements on their websites and podcasts, but I guess everyone needs to make money). The premise is that you can make your life feel longer and richer if you add a little novelty to it, at least once a week to be exact. This can be low investment like wearing a color you don’t normally wear or taking a different route to work, or high investment like booking a trip or taking a class in something you’ve never done before.  So, in addition to the “firsts” which I kind of put in their own category, I’ve also been enjoying some novelties: 

• A trip to the Museum of Illusions where I took many silly pictures with my mom and daughter.

• Reservations at a local cat cafe that just opened in a nearby city. My daughter is a cat lover. I am not. But it was fun to watch her play with and read to cats, and also an incredibly interesting social experiment for me to talk to the other folks there who love cats with a devotion I can only imagine. 

• Got tickets to see John Green speak on his new book and traveled to see him with one of my oldest friends.
• Got tickets to Dog Man the Musical for my daughter. She is 8 and so we are deeply immersed in the Dog Man universe. It was a cute show, very imaginative, and really felt like it was written by 5th graders (in a good way). As an added serendipitous novelty bonus, my grade school music teacher and her husband, band leader and chorus teacher at my high school, were sitting behind me with their grandkids and we had a good catch up.  

I’m gearing up for May by hosting a special theme party and preparing for my first ever recital as a dance mom (omg, is this real life?). I’ll definitely have more to share on those as they happen. 

I read 8 books over the last two months, including the new Hunger Games installment, James by Percival Everett, and Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. I also reread The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub which was one of my favorites when I first read it. It takes place in the 80s and the time capsule of being a kid at this time, and the language and how completely foreign it feels in 2025, were quite a trip. 

There were a few that really moved me: 

Evenings & Weekends by Oisín McKenna which featured many characters dealing with loss; Reflections of an Invisible Duck by Geigan C. Locke a story centered around the way family can drive us to be great, and the legacy people leave behind; Hum by Helen Phillips which was about parenting in a world where every move is scrutinized and the ways AI can humanize and dehumanize us; and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – which is also heavily about loss and just devastating. 

I have been tracking my reading on StoryGraph this year, and if you are curious, you can find me here. 

Grief check-in: 

Acknowledging my dad’s no-longer birthday and our annual Easter gathering without him hit me deeply. I feel like reading all of these books about grief and death didn’t necessarily help, but I would rather feel my feelings at this point than pretend they aren’t there. And thinking about Dad makes him feel closer, like a presence that is just softly waiting in the wings – like he always was when I needed him. Listening to some songs that reminded me of my Dad helped. I thought I would be sad about not having him around to ask questions or have conversations with, and I am a little, but I do feel like the conversations I have with him now that he is no longer on earth have helped me understand him a bit better than I did in life, like some of those secrets he held on to or protected me from have been able to slip into my consciousness in a way that we can both understand and accept. 

There is a part of me that thinks about how sad I will be that he can’t attend my daughter’s dance recital, or come to hang out in my backyard this spring and summer as the weather improves. I will miss his smile, his silly movie quotes, his playfulness, and the way he enjoyed whatever I made. Even when it was weird. He’d say something like, “Jessica always makes interesting things” and never made me feel bad if it wasn’t his taste (which was a stand out trait in our very picky extended family). 

I am reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey at the moment which is a dreamy, meditative (fictional) journal of a day in the life of the astronauts on the International Space Station. One of them, Chie, is doing her space work while grieving the loss of her mother, a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki, and some of the passages about her thoughts have stuck with me. 

“Her mother’s life was quiet and static, not a bit like Chie’s…But though their lives couldn’t be more different, all of Chie’s courage she owes to her mother…she comes from a line that slipped through the crack, the fissure of history, found a way out while the whole thing came down… When it comes to it, she doesn’t know her mother at all. It’s just imaginings and projections, and they could all be wrong.” 

And it makes me think about how even for those closest to us, someone’s mind can remain unknowable, both in life and in death. And yet, we try to understand, so we can make meaning of our own lives. The thought is impossibly beautiful to me, these intricate patterns of wanting to understand who we are, and wishing we understood the people who made us that way, and constructing meaning where we can, and then doubting our construction, and on and on. 

Kind of like tumbling through space. Which, I guess, we are. Happy day to you as you tumble.