Saving Daylight

New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday.  Has been since my days at the Skate Center of Roanoke Valley, rolling around repeatedly for hours and hours with my friends in our favorite new clothes from Christmas, having nothing but time on our side.  Skate Center always hosted an All-Nite Skate ( spelling intended for pop culture purposes, or maybe in the interest of fitting on the changeable letter sign at the street ) from 7pm to 7am.  We frequented the rink at least five days a week - most of us worked there part-time at some point - and definitely accumulated more than 12 hours over those days, but to just park it there socially for the whole twelve hours in one shot seemed a daring, challenging, privileged treat.  Something about having a place to be, where all your friends would already also be, was comforting and eased the pressure of adolescence social life for a bit.  I've always loved the energy of New Year's Eve.  I'm usually nostalgic when things move on or exper

I started doing these "ta-da lists" (vs to-do) a couple years ago in a halfway, inconsistent sorta way - always appreciating when I did.  The idea is from Gretchen Rubin's podcast "Happier" - implying that you will more often get a positivity boost from making a list of things you did after   you did them than before you did them.  For me, it works.  To cure the halfway-sorta-way of doing them, I've recently decided that I'll try doing them monthly, rather than weekly or daily.   So here's October.  Some of these include pictures, which are also a happiness boost for me.  These are in no particular order, by the way.   1 .   Bike ride / walk four miles round trip to patio lunch at Founding Farmers.  This was an excellent way to spend an afternoon with otherwise no plans.  He was a real trooper on the bike for this long. 2.  Related to bike rides and general around-the-town, there's been at least ten playground outings, duck-feeding walks to the l

Some Sunday mornings, something stupid snatches the rested part of my weekend brain, now two days removed from the workweek, sprinkled with motivation for the week ahead but not before an intentional pause.  But other Sunday mornings, I harness the power of future-me regrets and decide to chase away the stupid with something more thoughtful. There is nothing more consistent than the positive outcome of this decision.    A guy I dated in college had a family life I always admired, with two high-energy, ambitious sisters, and parents who were very active in their community, well-read, hilarious, with deeply-rooted family traditions.  His dad regularly had “Beethoven Sundays”.  It’s as simple as it sounds.  He listened to Beethoven on Sundays.  Because it brought him joy.  We’re no longer in regular communication, but I’ve always hoped that he still does it.  This idea has stuck with me and marinated for a long time.     A couple years ago, I subscribed to Maria Popova’s weekly blogpost “

I hardly ever remember dreams anymore.     Sometimes little snippets, but never the full-story, start to finish sort of remembering.     So when I started waking up in the middle of the night from medium-bits of nightmares, I knew it was something to be noted. For your reading comfort, I will preface this by saying that we are all okay.    Everyone who may come up in this little venture is completely fine, heading back to normal, and this writing serves as a small way of putting it behind us. I’m learning that whenever I’m really struggling, I tend to turn to the comfort-joys of my past - a complete retreat to a former version of myself.    Sometimes it’s things that I have completely forgotten were joys.    Sometimes they’re simple, like listening to an 80s song I’d forgotten I loved, or watching a favorite episode from a favorite show.    A peanut-butter-jelly-potato-chip sandwich.    Other times, I unlock a vault of a great idea that, to my surprise, folds perfectly into present day