February is a big month. It’s Lunar New Year! The year of the wood dragon.
Also, Valentine’s Day.
Also, the start of half marathon training.
I signed up for another half marathon in May and because I have the knees of someone much older, this also means i signed up for a monotonous daily physio routine that makes me feel like tearing off all my limbs on low-energy days. Today was one of those days.
For more content in the New Yorker about me (and all of us!) and running, see here, here, here.
Today’s run culminated in a visit to the new neighbourhood bakery, so, all ended happily.
What else is new….
I think it’s safe to say that pottery is a nascent new hobby and not just a passing phase. It became official when I re-installed Pinterest (which I had immediately and triumphantly deleted after my wedding) to access pottery inspiration.
I’m still really, really bad at it but I’m trying to do the thing where I accept that not every single thing I create has to be good.
Currently listening:
Some beautiful things/food for thought from an old episode of the Longform podcast (an interview of Hanif Abdurraqib) that brought me great comfort while driving out to do a relatively faraway errand. The whole episode is lovely but these stuck out for me:
On how he decides what to write about day-to-day, when putting together an essay (starting 29:00) -
“Taking on the role of an evangelist beyond being simply an essayist has been important for me, because i don’t have to spent a lot of time thinking through the argument that i’m going to make - instead, I realize that I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to properly find the language to ascribe beauty to something i’ve witnessed. […] How can I bring you close enough and how can I find the adequate language to describe to you what I am holding, even though you can’t see it? What can I do to describe it in a way that makes you want to see it, hold it, find it for yourself?”On the early phases of writing a book (45:00) -
“The map is gonna reveal itself the more I write. I have to trust that there is a map that will show itself to me the more attention I pay to what the story is telling me. […] There’s a type of fearlessness I feel when I’m in the early stages of a book … I can make this anything I want in a draft phase. […] I get to be unafraid here. I get to make mistakes. I get to stumble my way towards something. I get to seek out one good sentence in a fog of 10 bad sentences. I get to do that. There’s a real pleasure in digging into the mud of language and unearthing a good sentence. […] I am my most unafraid self when I get to revel in the draft phase and get to slowly uncover those maps.”
“Severance” by Ling Ma on audiobook has gotten me through a few runs now.
Thanks for reading as always.
Zoe
Bonus content: I finally updated my headshot because lots has changed since 2020. Which cartoon avatar would win in a fight? Cast your vote in the comments!
The Pinterest wisdom is from something I wrote. If you like it, check out my website: www.busywritinglists.com xx kiss
The first one would win in a kissing fight