We’re more than halfway through the fourth month of 2025. Back in January, I wanted to write about how quickly 2024 seemed to zip by. I wanted to write something reflective as the new year began but found myself once again thinking that January 1 doesn’t really feel like the beginning of the year to me because growing up, it comes in the middle of the school year.
Is everything speeding up? It feels like it is.
Laura and I were in Australia for the holidays. We’ve been together nearly ten years and there are now people in my life who are family who, without Laura, I wouldn’t know exist. When I go to Australia, I’m not just sitting on an airplane for a long time and then getting off somewhere else. I’m not just inverting the seasons and struggling to adjust to the time difference. Now, because of my marriage, I am visiting a place on the other side of the planet that feels like home to me. When I see it up close I feel how far away it usually is. The whole earth is stuffed into my chest.
This morning I did something stupid that for 34 years I never did once - but have now done twice in a month: When I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, I used the outermost bristles to finish scooping the blob of toothpaste from the tube. One of the bristles caught on the lip of the tube, momentarily becoming a miniature catapult. This catapult launched a little speck of toothpaste directly into my eyeball. It stung. The eyes taste differently.
In addition to the physical pain, which was bearable only because it soon began to dissipate, I felt stunningly, precisely inept. The first time this happened I simply marveled at it. But then it happened again this morning. It’s the kind of misstep that reminds you how delicately balanced and choreographed you have to be to navigate existing.
New life is bursting onto the scene all around me. I have a new nephew! Welcome, Benny! And cousins begetting new cousins, friends about to pop…if I were to turn on narration, I’d hear Sir David Attenborough in a breathless crescendo.
I watched my brother Lars play music for a small crowd and I felt something rare but familiar happening in the room as he and the band made their way through Comfortably Numb. As the song progressed, it became increasingly perfect and the unsuspecting crowd began to grow confused as to why they had suddenly been transported from a dim bar in Plymouth to the rippling fields of Valhalla. I whipped out my phone to record Lars’ extended guitar solo. I uploaded the video to TikTok where it has since garnered five million views.
I am just so happy to know that I am blinded by my brother’s talent not because it shines directly into my eyes, but because it is nuclear and all who gaze upon it must squint to keep from going blind.
I think it is a symptom of my sobriety that I am feeling overwhelmed. I am a tree and for a while I kept my branches huddled but now they have been extended long enough for new leaves to sprout and with these whiskers I feel the movements of the air. I am still buffering as I process this higher definition input.
Lovely.
Beautiful reflections on your world. Thank you for sharing these beautiful moments. And wear goggles when you brush your teeth. Or just don't brush your teeth. It will save you a lot of pain.