Splash No. 241 - New Seasons
New Seasons
San Francisco doesn’t have normal seasons, so I feel like I need to invent my own.
It’s the middle of February and earlier I was walking in sunny 60 degree weather, sweating through my puffer and confused. Later in the day, it was colder, but still felt too warm for February, I think. It’s technically winter right now, but it really could be any season, because I tend to wear basically the same number of layers regardless of the time of year. Only the the number of hours of sunlight seem to change.
I like thinking about nearly anything as seasonal, but more like a season of a TV show than an ecological season. I have seasons for hobbies, for certain people, for favorite foods, for music taste. So let’s invent some new seasons that match my reality a bit more than the ecological seasons do.
With the passing of the Super Bowl, football season is over, leading a Sports Lull Season, since basketball doesn’t get that exciting until around the start of playoffs in April. After the NBA finals in June, we enter Second Sports Lull Season until September, when football starts again. Second Sports Lull Season tends to be a little more manageable than First Sports Lull Season, since the days are longer and it feels like there’s more to do on the weekends. First Sports Lull Season is tough for me, because I lose the structure that my Sundays have had since the start of Football Season in September.
Since the days have started to get longer, I get home from work with some sunlight still around, enabling the beginning of another Running Season, as I try to remember how to put one foot in front of another a little faster than I do usually. As I start this season, I’m mentally preparing myself to have big dreams of running big races at big speeds which inevitably don’t end up happening. A friend of mine mentioned wanting to run the San Francisco Half Marathon, which I’m intrigued by, even though I’ve never run more than 5 miles. Running Seasons vary greatly in length and can end at any time, but hopefully this one will last for a while since I just bought some new running shoes.
Right now is also a Writing Season, because as I write this, there are two other pieces that I meant to work on earlier this week and absolutely did not. I have had quite a few Writing Seasons, times where my excitement for the art overflows and I find myself deeply immersed in writing groups, simultaneously working on many pieces at once, etc. I’m trudging into this Writing Season, still trying to find my bearings and establish good enough routines that I can actually do everything that I need to do, while hitting my quarterly existential crises about the point of writing at all. It’s all very overwhelming, but nothing different from any other given Writing Season.
Like any good seasons, these will all pass eventually and I’ll enter another completely different set of them. Perhaps they’ll return again some time, or maybe not. The unknown nature of them makes it feel even more important to notice them, name them, and pay attention to these moments while they’re still around.
Drops of the Week
ALBUM - Raven by Kelela - r&b and electronic album that i've been digging
ARTICLE - "What was Kyrie Irving thinking?" by Simon van Zuylen-Wood - great deep dive into the strange antics of Kyrie Irving and how he ended up where he is
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Seasonally,
Nikhil