Feel-Good Friday, 12/04/2020

Because if you can’t feel good on Friday, when can you?

Ahhh…Friday…working for the weekend!!!

First things first, how was everyone’s Thanksgiving? Mine was great. We had an awesome day and a delicious dinner with my Mom and Kerri’s aunt. They are excellent company, enjoy each other, and are definitely two of the people we are most grateful for. Nevertheless, when someone asked how Thanksgiving was, I mindlessly answered “fine”…and then proceeded to kick myself. In general I’m trying to eliminate the words “but” and “fine” from my vocabulary (and “guys” but that’s another story altogether) and specifically speaking the day was decidedly better than fine. It was fantastic. It gave us a chance to have a really nice visit with two of our most important people. It wasn’t fine. It was fantastic. Great. Awesome. Not “fine.” And in saying it was fine I unintentionally marginalized the whole experience. Which is kind of shitty.

It got me thinking about how I need to be ever more mindful of collecting myself (even if briefly) before I speak. Words matter. So what words do I want to use to honor the experience, to authentically reflect what I am feeling in the moment? No question I need to choose my words more thoughtfully. It also got me thinking about how easy it is to default to the comparative: “Fun, but not as fun as usual.” “Ok…different but ok,” or “I miss ___________” (among others, but you get my drift). Comparisons can be such an anchor, such dead weight, and what’s the point? Who cares? Yes, everything is relative…but everything isn’t always relative. It really is a textbook case of apples and oranges. Last St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, and every other day last year has been rendered completely and utterly irrevocably irrelevant and immaterial by COVID. And every bit of comparison we do takes one bite of joy out of the moment we are in. So yes I can easily compare this Thanksgiving to last year (Great in a different way, but oh, how I missed everyone I usually spend it with!) or I can just enjoy what the day was—an amazing afternoon spent kibitzing with three of my favorite people in the world, eating good food and drinking good wine. Seriously—is there anything better than that???

It called to mind two great lines, one that I know from John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” (although according to Wikipedia, Allen Saunders said a version of it first in Reader’s Digest in 1957) and another from the great hooky-playing mastermind Ferris Bueller:

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

And

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I know in these pandemic times it’s easy to feel stuck. But that doesn’t mean we have to be still. Time is dragging on and in many ways flying by, but it’s moving nonetheless. The devil is in the details. And slowing down is teaching me to appreciate all the beautiful, glorious details that I was too busy to notice and appreciate before. I can’t do what I used to do. And I can’t do everything I want to do. However, there is much that I can do…and so I do. Seriously what is the point of comparing anything???

Anyway, here are some things that have me feeling good this Friday:

1. Since March 15 I have walked (per recorded Apple Watch workouts) 564.59 miles, which explains why the soles of my sneakers are flat as pancake (and gives me an excuse to buy a new pair). It’s pretty cool to think that I’ve covered the distance from home to just over the border of North Carolina (give or take) since COVID struck and it also kind of cements the name I’ve chosen for this body of work, The Pedestrian Pundit. I’m putting my miles where my mouth is and I’m really committed to being a hard-core pedestrian. (Whatever that means.)

2. My “taste” in music. Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” edition is always a treat, and this year’s summary for me contained no surprises and some interesting data points. I’m linking to my Top Songs Playlist at the end of this, but I’m going to ask that before you click it you comment with what you think might be among my top songs. Just for fun. I was interested to learn that I am still open minded about music and that I listened to 288 new artists and 92 new genres of music (242 genres that I listened to in total). Which really has me wondering about how granular we get in breaking things down if there could possibly be over 300 genres of music‽‽‽ Anyway…I learned that I am also prettttty cutting edge, being among the first 50,000 Spotify listeners (IN THE WORLD) to stream Tom Petty’s song Confusion Wheel. My hipness was interrupted by the news that a) my top artist of 2020 was—wait for it—John Denver and b) that I had never even heard of (let alone heard ) the most streamed song of 2020 (Blinding Lights by The Weeknd). Of course, I addressed that immediately, listened promptly, and it’s not a bad jam. Kind of has a throwback vibe for me. Not sold on what all the fuss is about but I’ll probably listen to it again.

3. The Christmas/holiday season is upon us. The star on the front door is aglow, the tree is up, and I’ve enjoyed my personal Christmas season kickoff tradition, cranking up an old favorite from when we were kids, Deck the Halls by The Glad Singers and enjoying it unapologetically. Did we Comeau kids ever love that compilation album of classics by the greats—Perry Como, Mitch Miller, Bobby Vinton, Patti Page…ahhhh…the good old days. (Stop comparing! These days are good too!) I know that this year Christmas or whatever and all that surrounds it is going to be different (Hello, the Holiday Pops are cancelled!) and that’s a fact that can’t be changed. So we have two choices (broken record alert, but this bears repeating!), a) to ruin things by being sad or pissed off or whatever about what isn’t or b) to go all in on what is. I’m all in. Pour me an eggnog!

   

   The star on the door, aglow.

   (And, if your curiosity was getting the better of you…you can listen to the kitschiest version of any Christmas song ever, IMO, right below.)

4. Being 50% done with a typically two+ day in-person work meeting/event that was converted to four virtual sessions over three weeks. You know how it is, dealing with those people who seem to have as their standing #1 to-do list item: “Overcomplicate everything”… it can be so…draining. And annoying. And frustrating. Yet once you roll up your sleeves and the real work is getting done by qualified and committed people who are doing great stuff, well, there’s nothing better, really, professionally speaking. But those fringe people, man…they kill me. I don’t care what you wear or what your Zoom background is…you’re a goddamn grownup. Be appropriate. Leave me alone. (Plus I wore a shirt and pants with buttons AND dusted off my dressiest sneakers for the occasion, so really…leave me alone.) What was also awesome was that the person managing the logistics is a woman, the person who planned and ran the meeting (me!) is a woman, the six presenters (so far) are women…and the audience was almost all men. The tide is turning in our industry, and I’m loving riding the wave! And the meeting is halfway done! Yippee.

5. The Seattle Kraken’s new Intersectionality Consultant. Kerri’s goddaughter Chanel (you can find her on Twitter @chanelly37) was born with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bones disease, or what she calls “bird bones”). Chanel approaches her life in a very matter-of-fact way, doesn’t view “disability” as a bad word, is a senior at UMASS-Amherst, and is a rabid hockey fan. One thing you won’t know if you only talked to Chanel but didn’t see her is that she is in a (very high-powered and very functional, like it can lift up so she can drink beer and eat pretzels with you at a high top in a dive bar, which may or may not have happened IRL) wheelchair—which she never mentions, because that’s how much she takes her life in stride…until June, when she put it all out there and published the blog post that started it all. She subsequently hosted an awesome video podcast, C More Than Sports, to bring awareness to the very important issues of diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility (to name a few) relative to sports (and hockey in particular). Sadly but happily C More Than Sports is now on a break because The Blog Post got a lot of attention…ultimately leading to Chanel’s current role as an Intersectionality Consultant for the NHL’s newest franchise—the Seattle Kraken!!! (Go Chanel!) The Kraken’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and accessibility is unparalleled in the NHL (and I imagine in professional sports, excluding maybe the WNBA) and they are counting on Chanel to make sure that they are as inclusive as possible and that their new arena is accessible as possible. (Disclaimer: I may not be describing all of this exactly accurately or in the right order of events, or using all the appropriate terms, but I’m getting the plot right-ish and I, like most people, am learning as I go.) Anyway, on Wednesday at 7PMEST Chanel went live on Seattle Kraken’s Facebook, Twitter, AND YouTube channels—interviewed by their amazingly awesome and fun and funny new announcer, Everett Fitzhugh. Chanel is doing unbelievable work—she is calling attention to critical issues that, once they are addressed, will change the sports world. I’m so lucky to know Chanel and I can’t encourage you enough to watch the recording:

   

   Here are Chanel and Kerri when we visited her at UMass right before things went to hell. Saw a good win from the men’s hockey team too. (Chanel is on the left, Kerri is on the right 😂😂😂)

As mentioned earlier—drum roll, please—here is the link to my top songs of 2020. If you wonder how I’m processing this pandemic, and this extended period of pseudo-quarantine at home, wonder no more.

Lastly, a feel-good bonus: that cute little panda cub at the National Zoo finally has a name, Xiao Qi Ji—which translates to Little Miracle. Awww. I was interested in this outcome since I was intrigued by the Panda Cam months ago, right before the birth. Pandemic entertainment is a whole other breed of entertainment! (Click here for the Panda Cam!)

Happy weekend, all.

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