Happy Mud Season to those who celebrate. 

The ratio of days where it is not wholly unpleasant versus those that are just plain awful is slowly balancing out to a more even number, and just in time, too. 

I was surprised to note that I am closing in on 40,000 words written here (6,500 so far this year). Seems like a lot. Congrats to you if you have read them all! 

While winter tends to be less adventurous (to me) I was able to look back and remember a handful of new and novel adventures from the past three months:

• I got together with a friend who I met through work maybe 13 years ago. We’ve supported each other professionally for many years, but never had the chance to really hang out as friends, so after many, many reschedules for snow days and sick kids, we finally found time to share coffee and muffins and chat, and it was so, so lovely to get to know her outside of work stuff. 

• Speaking of work, I picked up a few client referrals and some contracts for clients who work in wildly different fields than I’m familiar with. My skills can transfer throughout the world of non-profit, so in these cases, getting to know the clients’ mission, their jargon, and the things that matter in their line of work was the big learning curve for me. It was exciting and a little nervous making, but for the first ti`me in a while I was very excited to be doing some work things that gave me that beginner feeling again. 

• I tried co-working with a friend at a local coffee shop. We both work for ourselves, and often work alone at home, or on our phones on the go, so this presented an opportunity to actually “have a place to go,” which added a bit of structure and urgency to my workday. 

• I threw a DIY birthday party for my daughter. The last few we have outsourced at some type of venue, so planning food, decorations and games was a fun mental task. 

• I tried an AI massage. I know, this sounds ridiculous. And I definitely wouldn’t try it again, but a spa where I have gone for years just introduced this “AI robot massage” option via email and I was like “ooh, novelty experience!” and went right away. It was so, so strange. These funny little robot arms ending in mitten hands gave me a one hour massage, where I could decide what I wanted it to focus on by touching a screen placed under my hovering face. I had to wear a special skintight outfit that wouldn’t cause the robot arms to snag, and I could adjust the pressure of the massage at any time. The best thing about it: the little mitten hands were heated. The worst thing about it: everything else. Massages are cool because you can talk to a person who has deep knowledge about how bodies work, and they can respond and adjust immediately to your feedback. The robot sort of responds immediately to your feedback, but it’s only so versatile. It doesn’t have elbows or fingers, it can’t get to know you, and you have to do the whole massage lying on your stomach, which my sinuses do not like. So, a fun thing to try, but overall it’s a 2 out of 5. 

One funny detail of the AI massage is you can pick your music playlist while you are lying there, and besides the standard nature sounds, meditation music, and classical piano, there is also “Cardi B plays her faves for you.” 

• I volunteered at the elementary school book fair, and I have done this one before, but my last stint was 2 years ago, so it felt new. I don’t know why, but I absolutely LOVE running a cash register, and that was definitely one of my favorite parts of this experience. The other was helping kids figure out what they could get on their budget, adding up the taxes with them, figuring out if they could add a bookmark or a coloring book, figuring out which dragon book was the best bargain. It was lovely, and I had such a good time, I even bought some books myself! 

• I visited a new music venue and saw two absolutely wonderful shows (Black Violin, reviewed in February, and Keb Mo’, someone I’ve wanted to see live for years). Experiencing music (or movies, or any art) with a live audience always reminds me how fun it is to share joy with other people, even and especially strangers. I love seeing the different ways people dance, move, and respond to music they love, what makes them come out of their shell and out of their seats, and watching how a shared love of something can create a temporary community. My husband and I danced to a Keb Mo’ song at our wedding, and when he played the song at the show I insisted he and I dance. We got to relive that wedding moment with our favorite song played live – it made me feel like royalty, actually. And when we were done, all of our seat mates gushed about how cute we were. It was good vibes all around. 

• Last, I saw an amazing local play with my mom, preceded by dinner. It’s been a long time since I went out 1:1 with my mom. It was a really fun night, and a sweet play about family, women, culture, identity, and navigating high school. And it was a rare opportunity to spend some uninterrupted time with someone I love and appreciate so much. 

I’m 17 books into my reading journey this year, and a few of the highlights of this season were: 

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

I read this because it’s a book I own that’s been on my list to read longer than any other book. Honestly, I’m not sure why I held out so long. This one was great, but brutal – a story about two brothers who took very different approaches to life. It examines how politics, and the roles that everyday people choose to play in political battles, can have staggering effects in their lives and the lives of the people they love. 

We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir by Anthony Hopkins

If you read this one, you must do the audiobook. While the book is read by Kenneth Branagh (who does an awesome job of playing Hopkins, and other characters like Sir Laurence Olivier and Hopkins’ dad) the real gem that I have gone back for seconds on is the Appendix. Hopkins makes an appearance at the close of the memoir to read some of the poems and soliloquies he loves and discusses in the book. Hearing him read As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden, Hamlet’s soliloquy, Ithaka by C. V. Cavafy, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot was like being invited to a private performance. These poems and plays are meant to be heard aloud, and he has the perfect voice, skills, and experience to bring them to life. 

The memoir itself is also a stunner. I loved hearing about how acting was the first type of work he ever felt like he could really do, how The Silence of the Lambs changed his life, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his regrets about the way he parented (or rather didn’t parent) his only daughter. 

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

This is a middle grade book that my daughter brought home from school and could not put down. I was intrigued by her interest, and so I read it alongside her in about 3 days. I was surprised by so much about this book. It’s an age-appropriate introduction to concepts of oppression, justice, freedom, and advocacy and as a book written from the first person perspective of a gorilla, it actually does a great job of allowing the gorilla to have an intelligent and unique voice. 

While this quarter has been a struggle mentally (thanks, state of the world) and physically (thanks, stomach virus) when I view it from the lens of the new and novel things I’ve done, it actually looks pretty great. Writing this has been a reminder of why I started this project in the first place. Prioritizing trying new things, and actually allowing myself to experience them fully, is definitely an antidote to the darkness of the winter months, and the winter feelings that creep in in other seasons.