LIVING DENSELY
“I want to live so densely. lush. and slow in the next few years, that a year becomes ten years, and my past becomes only a page in the book of my life.”
–Nayyirah Waheed
LEARNING TO WAIT
Waiting can be just fine.
I’m learning that slowly.
I’m a pretty efficient person. When I have a goal in mind, I don’t see the point in delaying things, and I make a plan to go after it. Whenever some plans get cancelled I always have a backup thing to do to make sure my time is well used.
When those parts of life that aren’t in my control make me wait a little longer for things I’ve been looking forward to, that really starts to challenge me.
I’m waking up to the fact that God doesn’t waste time, even when things feel stuck in place. Everything is made beautiful in its own time. Things happen during times of waiting that need to happen, even if we can barely figure out what they might be.
RAISING THE BUSH
The gym in January is pretty terrible, so you gotta get creative.
MARY OLIVER
“The question, and that is just the point, how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That is the big question. The one the world throws at you every morning. ‘Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’”
–Mary Oliver
Also a big fan of her instructions for life: “Be astonished. Tell others.”
I don’t read much poetry. I kinda wish I did, and perhaps someday I’ll take a deeper dive into that world and give it more of the attention from me it deserves.
In the meantime, I’m glad that so many of Mary Oliver’s words ended up in front of me enough times for me to know a lot of them by heart. Sorry to hear of her passing today but so thankful that she spent so much of her life reminding us all of how beautiful, wild, and precious of a gift it is to be alive.
ZARA ROSE
So happy I got to meet Baby Zara over the weekend. 💕
2018’S MOST MEMORABLE MEALS
For some reason it’s a yearly tradition for me to keep a short list of my most memorable meals of each year. Meals can be memorable because they were just plain fantastic, or because the experience was something otherworldly, like being invited in and fed by a local stranger when traveling.
I racked up a bunch of miles last year to some pretty tasty places. Check below to see my list and the link in my bio to see why exactly they’re so memorable:
💮 Bao Bei (Vancouver, British Columbia)
🍦 Rye Bread Ice Cream at Café Loki (Reykjavik, Iceland)
🍕 Bresola e Arugula Pizza from Pizzeria Magnifica (Rome, Italy)
🍗 Hattie B’s & Prince’s Hot Chicken (Nashville, Tennessee)
🥘 Madame Paulette’s Cornmeal Jambalaya (Fonds Verrettes, Haiti)
🍲 Szechuan Lamb Noodles at Kettner Exchange (San Diego, California)
🌮 Guisados (Los Angeles, California)
🍦 Basil Gelato from Stalin Gelateria (Vernazza, Italy)
🍳 Breakfast at Monell’s (Nashville, Tennessee)
🍝 Pici at Enoteca Bacchus (Montalcino, Italy)
SAN DIEGO’S WILD
One other San Diego thing that’s growing on me: it’s earthiness.
One of my earlier impressions of town was that it was a big tangle of freeways and impossibly expensive land. I’m not quiet about missing the richer greens, waterfalls, and forest cover of the Northwest. But I’m starting to better appreciate San Diego’s own outdoor charm. It’s still a better place for getting outside than most of the rest of the country. What’s started to win me over?
🥗 The food: San Diego county still has more small farms than any other county in the country and that makes it pretty easy to eat naturally.
🏃🏾♂️The hikes: There’s a wide enough variety of interesting trails around to keep mixing it up. There are some really underrated spots right around the border and even more close to the PCT that I really want to get acquainted with this year.
🦎 The wildlife: I never would’ve guessed San Diego to have more biodiversity than any other county in the US, but it apparently holds that distinction. A good chunk of that is marine life and there are some impressive bird species too.
I still wish San Diego’s urban core wasn’t so insulated from so much of this, but I’m glad it’s around. Knowing an area’s natural state makes it so much easier to feel at home in it.
