31 Jan 2022
Happy 2022!
First off, the usual:
I write letters home every now and then to ~20 of my family, close friends, and close friends to be.
This is my way of inviting conversation, feeling heard, and staying connected. I'm writing this because you matter to me.
Though I would love for you to read and respond, this email comes expectation-free.
Second off, thanks for your understanding with my erratic sending schedule.
To those of you who thought you might have fallen off the list, you haven't - I just haven't sent in a while!
The Big C
One of the reasons you haven't heard from me in a while is that I caught COVID. I was double-vaxxed (Astra Zeneca) at the time and it came during the holiday season.
It wasn't so bad. I was housesitting, and had an apartment to myself and a cat for company.
I did get symptoms, but they've since passed. A few days in bed. A few weeks of coughing and fatigue. All good on the other side of it. I've been able to return to running and similar cardio with no issues.
Something nice about being unwell like that is you're forced to be super gentle with yourself - something that doesn't always happen in the course of my usual life. And because it happened over the holiday season, the external pressures were also lesser.
2022
In 2022, I'm focused on writing, my health, finding synchrony.
The only two concrete TODOs for the year are to do a Thailand trip (I'll visit Sydney and Canberra on my way out) and to put together a solid audition repertoire.
You'll hear me talk about this in future letters, elaborating on what I'm trying to do and providing updates on how it's all going.
We're currently 9.6% through the year and it's going well so far.
Novelty
In the last season of life, novelty was brought about by travel. Now that I'm in one place, I've been letting myself get interested in a bunch of stuff: linguistics, language learning, history basics, anatomy/physiology basics, jazz, astronomy...
I've also watched more films in the last month or so than I have in the last 5 years.
This feels like a big deal. At some points, even just trying new music was overwhelming. For much of my life I've thought, oh I'm just someone who prefers the familiar. If I really think about it, it was more that the idea of novelty and change was just too much for me to handle.
It's not that nothing changed, it's just that I would either make change in drastic, almost irreversible, ways (eg. moving countries) or make change within a carefully built sandbox that I controlled (eg. changing my service catalogue or adding a new daily habit).
And maybe someone else would pull me into a healthy adventure, and I kind of went in kicking and screaming, even though I was grateful at the end of it.
I feel truly lucky to have found an alternative. It's been a real joy to follow my curiosity and to just enjoy where it leads.
Hope you're all well.
Love
Rosie