Friday recap, spring break edition

I find myself longing for the days when I was younger, perhaps dumber, and had endless things to write about my life without a second thought. A decade ago I would pour my heart out on a public blog for anyone willing to read. These days, I’m more conscious and aware of how permanent (and malicious) the internet can be, and I find it hard to really open up about anything of actual meaning… but I’m still here, and still trying to find a remnant of the voice I used to have.

Spring break arrived this week, and I wish I could tell you about the amazing adventures we had… but our adventures were more of the local variety and not necessarily new or exciting. But, honestly, I’m okay with it.

Social media likes to tell us lies – makes us believe everyone else is out there living it up on amazing vacation trips and eating amazing food and living life to the fullest. We see the highlight reels of someone’s life, the carefully curated photo shot at the right moment, the aesthetic that person wants to convey to us that says “look at how amazing my life is” and we’re hit with pangs of jealousy, even when we know it’s curated and not an accurate picture. Since my relative abandoning of most social medias, I’ve (mostly) managed to shield myself from these feelings this spring.

Life happened, as it usually does, and this year we weren’t able to take a vacation this week as we have the last few years. Over the last 4 years of our family lives, work obligations have made it so that we get very little time off, so spring break has become one of the precious times I have looked forward to, as a way to tell myself to keep going, as a way to push myself knowing I have a restful break on the horizon. So, knowing we couldn’t go anywhere this year, it was disappointing to say the least.

But, I didn’t let it bog me down too much, and we tried to make use of our time this week as best as we could. So, here’s a Friday recap of things from this week.

Breakfast at a new spot with the kiddo

An unexpected day off with the family for a zoo trip

This spring sunset

Painting these two pieces

The kiwi one was planned, though I really dislike it now that it’s done (but learned some things, so it’s not a complete failure). The mountain landscape I actually painted on a whim – I had paint left on my palette that I didn’t want to waste, and a reference picture came up in my search – and it has turned out to be a favorite of mine.

Reads that resonated with me:

• “…I would rather forfeit a music career than play this game any longer. This was one of my big takeaways from last year: spending 10% of my time being creative and 90% putting on the dog and pony show for the algorithms (not an exaggeration) is criminal (on the platforms’ part) and utterly insane (on my part), not to mention just plain fucking MISERABLE.” – Zach Sprowls
  
• “And maybe that’s the real issue we’re all facing. We’ve been taught to treat our lives like projects that can be optimized and improved, instead of something messy and human that grows over time. Maybe the quiet life isn’t about having the perfect lamp or the coziest sweater. Maybe it’s about letting go of the need to control it all and just letting life happen.” – What Ever Happened
  
• “There is no seasons with ambition, no pause, no rest, there is no cyclical living, no hibernation, no scaling down, only scaling up. But we, as humans are deeply cyclical beings.” – Nadia Meli