a great writer.

Last week, while sitting at the closest Starbucks (shame) and trying to cram in as much work as possible, an older man crept up behind me holding his laptop. “Are you good with computers?” he asked. I smiled and cleared a spot at my table. “I’m ok,” I answered. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to meet and stammered through something about a spreadsheet. I finally realized that he wanted to copy a spreadsheet from one folder to another. “Oh, that’s easy!” I told him. “You won’t believe how easy it is.”

So I showed him: select the spreadsheet file, control+c, control+v. He couldn’t believe how easy it was. He went back to his table with the spreadsheet in the right place.

An hour or so later, as he was leaving, he came back to my table and told me I was kind. He gave me his business card. We talked about his wholesale flower business, how he had been in the neighborhood for 20 years, how his niece in Israel kept telling him, “Uncle Benny, you need a website.”

He asked what I did for a living, and I told him, "I’m a grant writer." But he heard, "I’m a great writer." And he didn’t even hesitate. “Oh, you’re a great writer! You can help me write things! Advertising, website. Give me your card. I will call you.”

And that was that. I gave him my card. Who knows if we’ll cross paths again, but whatever happens, he’s out in the world thinking I’m a great writer.

On an entirely different note, I can’t stop thinking about this piece on racial privilege. It says a lot of things that I’ve been trying to find my own way to say.

So it’s dark and has been for the past four hours, because it’s December. We hung up a single string of Christmas lights, which is helping. I’m starting some new work tomorrow, thinking about dusting off my bike to get there, thinking about how casual my business-casual can be. On it goes.

mix CDs.

I got a new computer this summer when my old mammoth laptop started dying, unprovoked, all the time. I had saved my music and pictures on an external hard drive, and when the new computer came, I never got around to transferring them. I have music online when I want it, or NPR, or the turntable. Still, 5 months later, I have no music on my computer.

It seems so strange when I think about just 5 or 6 years ago when the music I owned was so precious. I drove from Minnesota to Massachusetts in the summer of 2008, alone. I had a thick folder of CDs tucked into the passenger seat next to me, including various mixes I’d burned onto CDs to conjure up the right feelings.

When I lived in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, I drove all the time. This was before podcasts were so much a thing, at least in my world. I listened to NPR sometimes, or the local classic rock station. And I listened to more mixes, burned onto CDs, to conjure up the right feelings. Broken heart mixes, wild and free mixes, independent lady mixes, etc.

And a few years later, I met Jacob. Within the first month we started seeing each other, I burned him a mix CD, carefully crafted to tell him that I liked him a lot, but not too much, because I was still a very cool and independent lady. Shortly after, he made me a mix. I can still tell you almost every song that was on the mix, not least of all I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, which obviously said everything.

Awhile back Jacob subscribed to Apple Music, and he just added me onto his family plan this weekend. So now I have unlimited music at hand, whatever I want, whenever I want it. Today it dawned on me that the age of purchasing music, at least in my life, is done. Apart from the vinyl I pick up at Salvation Army, I’m not buying music anymore. I know that there are lots of ways to still make mixes (actually the youths know, I don’t really know), but suddenly I was grieving for those old CD mixes that soundtracked the emotional landscape of my 20s. So it goes, I guess. Every generation has to mourn the things that they watched disappear.

when I'm walking.

It snowed here yesterday, rain mixed with big, fluffy snowflakes. Today the temperature dipped into the 20s, so every tree branch is still coated. The powerful radiators in our building run sporadically, so the temperature in our apartment (completely out of our control) dips between quite cold and quite warm all day long.

Yesterday morning, when I woke up to the gray, slushy day, I found myself strangely sentimental for Washington, DC. I loved the walks on Capitol Hill, walking down to Eastern Market or to H Street on a Saturday morning. Especially when the weather was cold and wet.

I started walking when I lived outside of Boston. I lived a mile and a half from work, was very poor, afraid to bike in the city, and couldn’t afford to park or ride the bus every day. So I got into the habit of walking to work, regardless of the weather. It took me 30 minutes. I can call back the world of those walks instantly - the people I would see, the intersections, where I’d cross the road, the sushi shop I’d look into every day without stopping. I would always listen to music on those walks, though I remember one traumatic morning when I got out the door and realized that I had accidentally deleted the music from my iPod.

When I moved to DC, once we were in the city, I started walking again. The office was one mile away, for a few months, and then it moved another mile further. The two mile walk took 40 minutes. Eventually I started biking most days, but the walk was so centering that I’d still do it sometimes. I got out of the habit of listening to anything. I’d just walk and look around and think.

meditation.

For the last month or so, I’ve been meditating. I’ve been wanting to start meditating for years - I even took a class at one point. But it’s been a hell of a thing for me to make into a habit. I have an anxious and productivity fueled brain, and the act of sitting quietly and doing nothing doesn’t come easily. But over the last few weeks, I’ve managed to hit a stride. With any habit, the more momentum you build, the easier it is to keep going. The more you break down the initial I don’t want to feeling, the less that feeling rises up.

Anyway, it’s a tiny thing. I meditate 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes at night. I sit on the floor or in a chair. I focus on breathing in and out. I try to relax my muscles one by one. When I started doing this last month, the internal resistance was unreal. I would sit down, the little faux bell on my phone would ding, and I would immediately be filled with restless angst and annoyance and, sometimes, anger. Where did it come from? I don’t know. All I know is that I would suddenly be filled and overflowing with thoughts of this is stupid and ohmygod how long will these 5 minutes last? and I can’t sit here anymore.

First up, I realized pretty quickly that my shallow breathing habit wouldn’t cut it while trying to meditate. Actually, I realized I had a shallow breathing habit, which I don’t think I understood before. So I’ve been practicing this a lot, breathing deep into my belly. Which lead me to the discovery that, like most of my body, my core tends to be super tensed up all the time. So just learning how to relax that and actually be able to take deep breaths has been pretty groundbreaking for me. And now, after a few weeks, the wild and crazy angry feelings are starting to melt away a little. I actually look forward to sitting. The bell rings and I can let go of my resistance, or at least some of it.

So that’s something I’ve been up to lately.

It’s raining and cold and dark here. Bran muffins in the oven. Podcast on the iPhone. And tonight I’m writing.

having fun.

I’ve been thinking about something a friend told me last weekend, something her mother says. Fun is a new thing. We were talking about how we answer the question, What do you do for fun? We live in a time, place, generation, socio-economic status, etc. that makes room for that question.

I get bogged down in the philosophical questions of life. I mean, I get bogged. down. What do I do for fun? What is fun? What is the purpose of fun? What is the PURPOSE OF LIFE? Etc. Suffice it to say, I never know how to answer the question, What do you do for fun? I write, and though I’m trying to embrace some of Elizabeth Gilbert’s big magic, it still seems like a stretch to call writing fun. I read. I run (although not lately) (and it’s more the idea of running is fun than the actual running). Like every freaking person my age, I watch TV sometimes via Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and HBO. I cook and think about food. I go for walks.

It all feels pretty generic and vague to me. I’ve been having this urge lately to develop real, actual hobbies. I’ve spent the last 6 months working on my professional bio, but I don’t have a personal bio, and I don’t even know what it would say. I want to have specific interests, things I get really jazzed about, things I want to talk and talk about. Or maybe I already have them, but they’re not clearly defined in my own mind and I don’t own them as me.