easter letter
Manila, 1 April—Happy Easter, if you celebrate! Hope your vacation is going well. Mine has been restful so far—thanks greatly to time spent away from my phone. I’m a fan of the unplug—which is actually harder than it looks, I admit, but once you get the hang of it, well. Let’s just say I now understand the charm. Maybe every weekend should be unplug weekend.
Did you go to the beach? I skipped again this year and opted to spend the weekend in the city. I downloaded my Facebook archive as originally planned (Have you? Here’s how.) but I have not scrutinized it. I feel like it’s much ado about spilt milk. Maybe some other time.
Anyway: If, like me, you’re spending these days a bit here, a bit there, and everywhere all the time, spread thin and just trying to roll with the punches day after day, I suggest you listen to Austin Kleon deliver this talk called How to Keep Going.He outlines 10 tips on keeping on and moving forward, and my favorite so far has something to do with a Bliss Station.
Austin ends this with a gardening story that really deeply resonated with me:
The months leading up to World War II were some of the most terrible months of Leonard Woolf’s life. He had listened on the wireless to Hitler’s “savage and insane ramblings” on the radio with his wife, Virginia Woolf. One day, when he was out in his orchard, Virginia called out to him that lunatic Hitler was back on the radio.
“I shan’t come!” he shouted back at her. “I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead!”
That’s my battle plan, friends: To live to tell the tale.
I hope you live to tell yours, as well.
Music rec alert: Hayley Kiyoko's new album "Expectations" is out.
What I love about Hayley is that she writes about a very very specific sliver of life as a woman who loves another woman and while very specific, it is also somewhat universal, like: Have you ever been in love with your best friend because it's excruciating to be in sleepovers with her. And everyone who's ever loved a girl, even those who weren't in love with their best friend ever, just go, RIGHT THAT IS ABSOLUTELY IT. tldr i love it. It feels a lot like someone has turned on the lighthouse for women-loving-women and we're all on the shore and we're quickly paddling.