March F.O.C.U.S

A month that held this much deserves to be written slowly. So that is what I am doing—writing it slowly, the way you linger on a chapter you don't want to end.

Favorites

I came to fiction in early March with modest intentions: a palate cleanser before Stanford LEAD began, something easy to carry. Instead, I fell through the floor. Fourth Wing led to Iron Flame led to Onyx Storm, and then somehow I was standing at the edge of ACOTAR wondering if I had the willpower to step back. The honest answer is no. I am the kind of reader who gets too invested, too quickly, who lets characters live rent-free in her head long after the last page, still thinking about them while making coffee, still a little heartbroken days later for no defensible reason.

Outings

It started with a breeze. Not a plan, not a packed bag, just the sudden, unmistakable feeling of cool air and the rare gift of a day we could actually afford to give away. Within the hour, we were on a train to the Blue Mountains. The city fell away outside the window, tray table folded down, book laid flat, coffee secured, and then the mountains rose up to meet us. Peaceful and unhurried.

Up in the mountains, we explored on foot and by chance, hopping buses with no fixed agenda, letting the trails decide. The whole afternoon smelled of gum trees.

Challenges

It is difficult to name this one cleanly, because it isn't a single thing. It's an accumulation, the kind of fatigue that comes from forces entirely outside your control, but keeps creeping in regardless.

Tech layoffs. War. The cost of groceries, rent, even a cup of coffee. This is the exhaustion that comes not from doing too much, but from watching too much, from being aware of the size of the world's problems and the smallness of your own hands. March had a lot of that. I am learning how to keep going when the noise doesn't stop.

Uplifts

Stanford LEAD began.

There are moments in a career when you feel yourself leaning forward, actually forward, toward what comes next. Sitting inside this program, knowing that the people in the (virtual) room beside me have come from across the globe, each carrying their own industries and questions and ways of thinking, that is the feeling. Not knowing yet what you'll learn, but being certain it will matter.

Shifts

This one has been building quietly for a while.

It's Fresh Off The Boat at the moment, but the series is never really the point. The point is that somewhere along the way, Gian and I claimed the end of the day for ourselves. Nothing grand. Just the couch, the dim light, the day mercifully over. Two people winding down in the same direction.

We are still figuring out the world (I think we always will). But we have gotten pretty good at the nights.