Yes, we’re already well into April — a third, to be exact! — but since I was away the first week of April (and the last part of March) I figure I may as well do the recap now.
March was a month for sure! Among the highlights:
— riding over the Golden Gate Bridge (twice)
— singing in a performance of Finzi’s 7 poems of Robert Bridges and Britten’s 5 Flower Songs. These were hard hard hard for this amateur musician to learn but…I did.
— a sunrise run along the Atlantic Ocean (twice)
— beach retreat with Sarah. Mojitos and ceviche were involved!
— reading the audio book narration of Big Time and realizing I still really like this book. I can’t wait to share it with the world.
— opening a box of printed copies of the book! And then putting it on my book stack with the others. Longtime readers know this book was a process — I wound up switching agents and publishers. But now it exists, just as I imagined several years ago.
— seeing the Thorne rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago – and vicariously enjoying the Chicago St. Patrick’s day revelry (the river was GREEN)
— my parents’ joint 80th birthday party
— seeing cherry blossoms in Japan! We timed this perfectly for peak bloom.
— Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo – I just loved this. Like a 60-second party in the street every few minutes.
— Mon Cher Ton Ton – they cook in front of you, like a really high-end Beni-hana. It was so good.
— Kitcho – and enjoying this dinner with my 16-year-old, who popped a whole squid in his mouth. Each of my children have their wonderful qualities, but he is definitely the kid I could take on a trip like this.
There were challenges too. For instance, I was really squeezing in runs and strength training sessions — I’m hoping to hit reset on good habits this month. I have run three times since coming home, and done my strength training, so that’s good. I spent a lot of time on airplanes (7 segments in March) and it is always hard to use airplane time well. I definitely need to buckle down on writing Golden Hours as that is due in October and — fun fact — that is now less than 6 months away. I also feel like I lost an unreasonable amount of time to anxiety in the days leading up to the Japan trip. The fact that “4 hour TSA lines” were constantly in the news did not help. I travel a lot so it doesn’t work with my life to get like that before a trip. I have a massive work trip scheduled for the end of August and I definitely do not want to spend the week before it (when I will be on vacation!) worried. So…something to work on.
Months with a lot of travel like this completely warp the experience of time. I wrote a draft of this post on April 1st and March 1st seemed like ages ago. It’s not really sustainable, but making time seem longer is not a bad thing.
Now, belatedly looking forward to April…
As mentioned, I started a draft of this post on April 1st while in Japan, but I didn’t post it because I was away for spring break and then posting about spring break. So April is well underway. But still, I find it’s helpful to think about the arc of the month.
April began for me in Kyoto. We had a relaxed morning, but were still jet lagged and waking up at 4:30 a.m., so it was really just a long morning. After breakfast, I went on two short walks (one solo, one with my son) to see the cherry blossoms. It was really so beautiful with the flowers against the gray sky. Other April Japan highlights included e-bike riding in the Lake Biwa area, hitting Universal Studios Japan with my son, a sushi-making workshop, and the teamLab Borderless Digital Art museum.
The rest of April is going to be work-heavy. My book is out May 5. So the month is going to include a lot of podcast recordings and random other opportunities for promotion as they come up.
On the singing front: My church choir is performing Missa Gaia in late April. One of my contributions to this is singing a kyrie line that is trying to imitate an Arctic tundra wolf. My downtown choir will be starting a cycle for the last concert of the season. I’m also likely going into NYC one night to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. This was such a big part of my life from 2003-2011 and I’m thrilled they’ve kept going.
Random fun: My husband and I have a date night planned that involves stand-up comedy (not us, a real comedian). I’ve got plans to go to Longwood and will try to fit in a Chanticleer visit during a workday. My Yoshino cherries and weeping cherries are blooming. The Kwanzans should be out within the week — I can see the pink petals in the buds.
Then the last weekend in April my college kid will come home! He’s leaving again for a summer program abroad 10 days later but he would be home for a little bit at least. Around this time my 16-year-old should also get his driver’s license so the two of them may be battling over who gets the kid car. Fun times.
Now, content! I didn’t do a round-up post last week so I’ll just highlight a few from the past two weeks. Over at Before Breakfast last week I interviewed the wonderful Ximena Vengoechea about how to listen better. She had some great tips on conversations, and as a bonus we talked about her “Life Audit” book, so in honor of Tax Day next week please be sure to check that out!
This week I interviewed Marcus Buckingham about how to “Design love in” (which is the title of his brand new book!) Love sounds like a funny word for a business book, but he points out that when people are really excited about a company’s products (or working for the company), “love” is the word they use. So why not embrace it?
Some short episode highlights include “A little planning is better than nothing,” and “Don’t shoot the second arrow.” Adversity is inevitable, but some suffering is optional. I had an episode on why it’s wise to “Keep shoes by the door” and experienced in Japan that in some places that’s what everyone does.
Over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter, I wrote about why we should “Figure out how much time is available.” Given how much time routine stuff (and meetings) take in the average workday, there might be fewer hours available for projects than you think (unless you take action to open up more space). I wrote that “Now is good.” In many cases, you can save yourself some scheduling work by having a conversation or a get-together right then. If you want to remember random things, I suggested that you “Take a screenshot.” (Though as people pointed out, you might want to set a time to delete some of these after a while!) As you plan your week, I suggested asking “What would you like to remember?” That can help you figure out highlights that can be anticipated and savored. Behind the paywall I wrote about “10 things to do today that can save time all year.”
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You might also consider joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community. Each week we have several discussion threads going. Our next zoom meet-up will be on April 20th at 1 p.m. where we’ll be talking summer planning. Please check that out!
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On April 1st, I woke up in Sydney. I’m in the same boat regarding a drop off in exercise in March. I was on a cruise ship circumnavigating Australia for the entire month. I had a 150 day Peloton streak going but blew it at the end of March the day before we got off the ship! I managed to do some walks on the outside decks or on excursions ( which I tracked on the Peloton app). But meditation counts as a “workout” on the app too. While that was good for my mind, it did not create any movement for my physical body, and I relied on meditation to keep the streak going a bit too much. I’m looking forward to spring, although I was disappointed to find that our huge array of daffodils ended up in peak bloom while we were away.
@Beth – a 150 day streak is impressive – I think being on a cruise ship is a reasonable excuse for taking a streak freeze (in DuoLingo parlance…).